Will You Come? II
by TsoLan
Summary: When Lynsey Perron met the Doctor and Rose, she had no idea what she was letting herself in for. It all started off as a mild curiosity in a supermarket. It turned into a frantic chase through space and time, as the Doctor and Lynsey try desparatley to save Rose from herself, before it's too late. Or is there something else afoot? Is everything quite as it seems? Time will tell.
1. Lynsey's Story I

I never paid much attention to the strange man in the leather jacket. Not to begin with, anyway.

He started turning up at the shop one week. Ha. One week. One week out of the endless weeks in the life of a checkout operator, each one melting away into the next, and all of them identical.

Five days out of every seven, I wake up _too early_ and roll out of bed. I wash (sometimes, I kid you not, with w _arm water_ when the boiler's working), I eat (when there's food in the flat) and I catch the bus (if it turns up) at seven each morning. I get to work, on the other side of town, at eight sharp (unless, I've had to walk, on account of the absent bus). I then work for eight hours a day. I've got nothing much to say about my work. I'm the checkout girl. One of a dozen checkout operators. Ever been to a supermarket? Yes? Well then, you'll know what I do all day.

That's what I was doing, the first time I met the leather jacket guy...

* * *

 ** _20th November 2020_**

* * *

So I was on my till, at eleven in the morning. I'd done three hours of my shift, but I had five left to go. On account of that, I was in a pretty poor mood. And it was about to get worse;

Along came customer number seventeen-trillion, pushing a shopping trolley which was loaded to the brim. Inwardly, I sighed. Outwardly, I smiled.

"Hello there!" I said outwardly as the customer (a porky, bearded old gentleman) began unloading his goods onto the conveyor belt. _Just sod off_ I said inwardly.

Now, here, most customers would brightly reply; "hi!" They would then make a comment about the weather. This _is_ Britain after all. We might have a chat. We might not. I'm not a chatty person, and if the customers aren't either, the rest of the tedious transaction passes in mostly silence. I'll toss the stuff through the scanner, the customer will pack it (sometimes with my help), and then I'll take payment, hand over the receipt, and bid them a grateful farewell. Other times, it might be a Chatterbox Charlie on the other side of the till. In which case, we'll have a chat. By that, I mean that they'll talk, whilst I pretend to listen, nod, and say "yeah" at random intervals. The point I'm trying to make here is that most customers, by far most, are entirely pleasant and reasonable individuals. They'll be polite, they'll be reasonably patient if problems arise, they'll treat you good.

That's most customers. But only most. Now and again you get a moron.

The porky, bearded gentleman, I soon discovered, was a Grade-A Moron. He didn't respond to my (entirely pretend) cheerful greeting. That was the first sign of trouble. Not a word. Just looked at me with two wet, piggy blue eyes and carried on tossing his garbage onto the conveyor belt. Yes, I said garbage. Without naming names, I work for a horrible little supermarket chain. We sell a load of trash. Correction - _we are a wonderful, cost-effective supermarket! Good quality food, good quality prices!_

Anyway, things quickly went from bad to worse. Want to know why? One word - _soup_. Carrot. Soup.

I picked it up off the conveyor belt and held it against the scanner. It gave that familiar, dream haunting _beep_ that it usually makes, as opposed to a longer _booop_ and an error message, which signals trouble of some description. Till crash, item out of date, product recalled, something like that. Well, no. It went through fine, and so I tossed it down towards the mug I was serving, and reached for the next item (a sack of spuds, some of them shaped remarkably like their new, soon to be owner.

"Oi!" Came a gravelly, whinging voice. I dropped the spuds and turned to the man, shocked to discover his angry red face rather close to my own.

"Eighty-five pence?" He demanded, nodding at the price indicator to my left. This was, I realized, one of those infuriating muppets who scrutinizes the price indicator each time an item goes through.

I shrugged. "That's what it says."

"Yeah, well it's wrong." The moron barked. He thrust the soup back at me. "It said seventy pence on the shelf."

"Did it?" I asked, without interest. "Want me to call the supervisor?"

"No, no, no," the mug snapped angrily, "I ain't got all day, love. I wanna pay seventy pence for it."

"Yep," I replied wearily, "which means I need to call the supervisor. The till won't let me change the price myself." Without asking him again, I reached underneath the till and pressed the "assistance" key which might (or might not) summon a supervisor to help.

"Oh, for goodness' sake!" The man exclaimed, slamming his fist down on the aluminium surface of the packing area. "Just do _something_ about it quickly!"

I sighed. "What do you suggest?"

"I work for a rival company," the man boasted, "and _we_ don't keep our customers waiting for _anything_."

"Is that right?" I asked flatly. I almost laughed - the guy was literally boasting about working in a shop, albeit a different one. I'd seen it all now. Nothing wrong with working in a shop, of course. But it's certainly not something to boast about. It's just a neat little way of paying the bills, providing you can tolerate the customers.

"Look, _sir_ , it's fine," I assured him, putting as much contempt on the " _sir_ " as possible, "we'll leave it to one side 'til the supervisor gets here. I'll put your other items through while we wait."

The man thought it through a moment, before grunting his agreement. I could tell that he'd been itching to find fault with that plan, to find another reason to have a go at me - clearly, for reasons best known to himself, he'd been itching to have a go at _someone_ since getting out of bed that morning. But he could find no reason to complain. The rest of the transaction took five minutes. And guess what? No supervisor. So...

"This is bloody stupid," the moron spat, "why can't you bloody well get of your backside and find the bloody manager? I'll go to another shop next time, mark my words."

"Okay." I said, wondering how he'd arrived at the conclusion that I cared a jot where he shopped in future. So long as they pay me, what do I care? Plenty more customers out there.

My flippant attitude wasn't helping matters, in all fairness. It was only making him more angry, something I took an odd sort of satisfaction from. By this time, a queue had formed behind the man. Next in line was an old lady, who was gazing at the furious man in quiet distaste. Behind her, a man with short, dark hair and a black leather jacket. He had a mole on his cheek, and a large pointy nose. His eyes were blue. Very blue.

And it was he who saved me that day. The first of many times.

"All right, mate?" The stranger said, edging past the old lady and clapping the angry man on the back cheerfully. He rounded on me. "Got a problem?" He beamed. His smile was wide, his teeth white. Yet his eyes startled me. _They_ weren't smiling.

"Bit of till trouble," I explained. "Supervisor's coming." I assured him weakly - though it had been several minutes since I sent the first call out, and Delia (my least favourite supervisor) was still nowhere to be seen.

"She's been saying that for ages," the old idiot grumbled, "would be better if she knew how to do her own bloody job!"

"As I've said," I retorted tersely, "the system won't allow me to change the price. Gotta be a supervisor who does that."

The old man scoffed. The leather-jacket man, however, looked down at the till screen thoughtfully.

"Happen I could sort it," he said brightly.

"Er...you don't work here..." I replied.

"Nah, but I'm good with computers me," the man beamed, pulling a strange little grey tube from the pocket of his jacket. He pointed it at the back of the till's screen and pressed a button. The tube buzzed, and a blue bulb at the bottom illuminated. To my astonishment, the screen flicked instantly up onto the supervisor's screen, normally only accessible with a password.

"Go fer it," the man said brightly. His accent, I noticed, was northern. Salford, perhaps?

I chuckled lightly and, quickly as I could, altered the price of that wretched little tin of carrot soup. I watched in relief as it changed from eighty-five pence to seventy pence, reducing the man's total bill by a grand total of fifteen pence. "There." I said, thrusting the soup at him.

"About time." The old idiot snapped, jamming his bank card into the card machine. "Useless service. Says a lot when a customer has to sort it out for you."

The transaction was finally finished. I handed the man his receipt. "Please come again." I said sarcastically.

"Fat chance. Thanks for nothing." The man turned to leave. But as he did, the leather jacket guy's hand went back to his fleshy shoulder. The grip was different this time. Not warm and genial like before. Hard. His fingers dug into the man's fatty shoulder.

"Listen, pal." The man said, in a pleasant and reasonable voice. "I didn't appreciate that. The way you spoke to me new friend here," he shot me a little wink out of the corner of his eye.

"Oh, well!" The man retorted angrily. "Useless service! I'll have you know, I work for a rival supermarket and-"

The stranger's grip on the man's shoulder hardened.

"I didn't appreciate the way you spoke to her. Next time you wanna be rude to someone, don't make it a young lady who's jus' trying ta help ya. Okay?"

The man opened his mouth to argue back, but then he looked into the strangers eyes. I guess, like me, he saw something in those eyes that scared him...there was a power coming from this man, something I couldn't put my finger on at all...some sort of intense, angry energy, that might at any given time burst past that fake cheerful persona. And like me, it scared him.

"Well, I won't be back here, that's for sure," the moron said, shaking himself free of the stranger's grip.

"I think yep," the stranger said. "I think that's okay with you. So I guess the next time you wanna to be rude to someone, you'll kind of keep a look out for me, won't you? Are we good, pal?"

"Whatever you say." The old man said, pushing his trolley away and leaving the supermarket (and, thankfully, the story) forever. I watched in immense satisfaction as he went. Despite his defiant farewell, I could tell how rattled he was.

The stranger watched after him before shrugging his rather muscular, leather-dressed shoulders and moving back to his place in line, behind the old woman who throughout the whole exchange had seemed more interested in a magazine she'd picked up than the unpleasant scenes which had taken place right under her nose.

She came and went through the checkout in much the same way that ninety percent of customers do. We greeted each other, I apologized for the small delay, we lapsed into silence while I put the items through and she packed (and yes, I did offer to help her), before she paid, took her receipt and left with a cheery goodbye.

Next up - the leather jacket man.

"Hello again," I grinned, picking up his first item. A simple ham sandwich on white bread, costing only a pound. I suddenly realized that the man had nothing, and I mean nothing except sandwiches. There had to be at least fifty packaged sandwiches on my conveyor belt. I glanced up at him uncertainly.

"Is this a joke, mate?" I said, giggling.

"Naw," the stranger laughed, his northern burr ever so pleasant, "I love me sandwiches, me. Me an' a mate are 'aving a bit of a stakeout later tonight. Need to keep me energy up."

"Well, okay," I laughed. "Got your own bags?"

"They'll fit in my pockets." The man said.

I laughed, thinking it was a joke, and thrust a couple of plastic bags at him. He took them. My hand hovered briefly over the five-pence bag charge, but then dropped. I didn't want to charge him extra. Not after earlier.

"How'd you do that with the till earlier?" I asked him. "What was that thing?"

The man laughed again, and broke into an out of tune little song;

 _#Once the human didn't know all the things that they know now._

 _#But the 'uman they sure learnt a lot._

 _#Coz they ask the Time Lord "how?"_

I smirked. "Peter Pan." The words were different, but I recognized the vaguely offensive yet hugely catchy little tune from Disney's Peter Pan, my favourite film as a kid.

"Got it on one," the stranger laughed. He peered at the name tag attached to the front of my uniform. "Lynsey, huh?"

"That's me," I agreed, "Lynsey Perron. What's your name?"

"The Doctor."

"The Doctor, huh...well, thanks buddy. For earlier, I mean."

"Nothing to it," the Doctor said, winking. "Never liked bullies ya see."

"Nor me, nor me," I said, continuing to rush his sandwiches through the till. It was now, and only now, that Delia the supervisor finally came over.

"Did you call?" She said innocently, as though I'd only send out the alert a second ago.

"We're good." I replied shortly, not looking up at her. She skulked away again. She didn't like me, and I didn't like her. And she knew I didn't like her. Nobody did. I had once; when I started working here, a hundred-trillion years ago (okay, four), she'd been a checkout drone like myself. She'd been fine; chatty, funny, a nice lady all round. But then she'd gotten a promotion to supervisor, and turned into an angry, pompous zombie. Sad really. A tiny amount of power can go a long way in some people's heads.

Finally, the sandwiches were through. After some confusion with the money, the man finally gave me the correct amount.

"Sorry," he said sheepishly, "not from round 'ere."

"They even got different money up north?" I asked incredulously.

"No. But...well, lot's of planet's 'ave a north."

"Okay," I said uncertainly, handing him his receipt.

He took it and winked. "I'll probably be seeing ya' round," he said, "I'm in the area for the foreseeable. Stakin' out the supermarket."

"Oh yeah?" I frowned. "Do you mind if I ask why?"

"Yep." The man said, grinning mischievously. "Top secret I'm afraid. See ya." And with that, he was gone.

It was only later that I noticed the bags I'd given him were still there, unused. I played over what he'd said in my head; _"they'll fit in my pockets."_ I stared in disbelief at the bags, and then behind me, in the direction he'd walked away in, as though he might still be there. He wasn't. I looked back at the bags, and shook my head. "Couldn't be..." He must have had a bag of his own...

And that was how it all started. The start of my impossible journey with the Doctor and Rose Tyler.

* * *

 ** _The Doctor's Diary, Entry 1970_**

* * *

 _Well today's been a total write off, ain't it? Waste of time. Spent ages in that supermarket looking for any signs of the Whispering. Nothing. Nout, nada. Nuttin'. More clever than it looks. But he's gotta be here! We've been chasing him for long enough, and the Tardis is insistent that he came here after the incident at Locus Heights. So, after an hour skulking around, sonicking at regular intervals, I had to buy something. I think the bouncer was getting suspicious. Fancied some sandwiches for tonight's stakeout. Me and Rose (who spent the day clothes shopping!) are pulling an overnighter outside the store. We've got to find it, before it wipes out all life on Earth!_

 _In short - just another day at the office._

 _Tell you what though, perhaps today wasn't a total write off after all. Met a nice girl on the checkouts, put some idiot in his place...I like to help where I can, even in tiny ways. It all helps...keeps my mind of things. Sometimes, lately - just sometimes, mind you - I feel happy again! Like I did before everything changed. Sometimes, when I'm with Rose, I feel like the old me again. Before the Time War. I swear it; those interludes of happiness are getting longer, and more frequent. One day, perhaps, I'll find the Doctor within me again._

 _I hope. I'm allowed to hope._


	2. Lynsey's Story II

The next time I saw the leather-jacket guy, things got even weirder.

That was three days after the first time, and I'd just finished my shift. And this is what happened...

* * *

 ** _23rd November 2020_**

* * *

My mood couldn't be more different compared to the first time I'd met him - then, I'd been only part way through a long, tedious shift. Not like today. I'd finished. And not only that; tomorrow was a day off!

I was clutching a bag of Minstrels, my night-off treats. I'd eat the entire bag in front of some trashy late night television (sharing with my flatmate Steph, if I was in a good mood), and then I'd wake up when _I_ chose, not when my alarm clock dictated that I woke. Could therefore be any time between nine and midday. I strolled down the cold-meat aisle, on my way to the staff-area, where I'd change out of my hideous uniform (I won't tell you the colour, lest you guess where I work, and get me sacked for slander), so let's settle on "ugly." Ugly colour. That was my uniform. I walked quickly, a spring in my step which was absent on any other day.

"'Scuse me," an elderly lady said suddenly, stepping out in front of me.

 _Just stuff off!_ I thought, as I painted on a smile. "How may I help?"

"Hummus?"

She wanted to know where Hummus was, huh? Well... basically, not a clue. I only work here! I don't know the bloody layout, it's a big store! I was about to send the old woman off in any random direction, before scarpering, as I'd done many times in my long, vapid career at the store. But then another thought came to me. My grin widened. I'd always wanted to do this;

"So we sell several types of hummus," I informed her sincerely, "ranging from our own brand, to the slightly more expensive big-name brands. Our range varies from chickpeas to other types of beans, some flavoured with lemon and garlic, while others are more plain. And um...they come in a variety of sizes too. For instance, we sell small pots for one family meal, whereas other sizes are better suited for when your catering to a large group of people. Oh for sure, we've got a good selection of hummus."

The old lady, who'd been patiently listening to me rant, nodded. "Which would be where?"

I blinked. "Sorry?"

"Where is it?"

"Oh, I've got no idea I'm afraid."

The old lady scoffed and trundled off. I stuffed my fist into my mouth and walked quickly away. Finally, I burst through the double-doors into the staff area (cold, grey floors, dusty walls, packed with pallets of stock) and burst into laughter. I'd seen it on some YouTube video once. How to be the ultimate time-waster.

Okay, it's not very funny. It's stupid. But when you work in a job as soul-suffocating as mine, you have to amuse yourself somehow...

I slammed my card against the "clocking" system and bounded upstairs to the staff room. It was quite empty; it was five-thirty. Only I finished at five-thirty, and nobody else started until nine in the evening. Those people were, of course, the zombie night-staff, a strange group of pale, lifeless people who seldom spoke and who only came out when the sun went down. I strolled across the empty room (a wide open space with sofas, a pool table, and a (closed) canteen, with a couple of vending machines against the wall to my left. On the other side were the changing rooms. I kicked the door to the ladies' open. It was a small, poky room with a bench in the centre, and about forty large, blue-doored lockers. They were about five feet in height and a foot or two across. They were that large on account of the fact that some people (not me) required steel-toecap boots and safety equipment for work, if they were in the warehouse or part of the store's maintenance team. In those cases, they needed a lot of room to store all their gear. Me, I only had a silly three piece uniform (jacket, blouse and trousers), and so I didn't need a locker of even half that size. Nevertheless, I had one.

I know what your thinking now; why's she droning on about the size of her locker?

Perhaps this will explain why;

I jammed the key into the hole and twisted it left, like I always do. The door opened outwards with a creak, like it always does. I was just about to bend down to pick up my stuff, like I always do. Except...

"Hey, Lynshey." Came a squeaky voice from inside the locker.

"Woah!" I screamed, leaping about a foot in the air and drawing back from the locker. I allowed the door to swing the whole way open, and watched as it revealed what was inside. I stared. I blinked several times, and rubbed my eyes. If I was high as a kite and drunk, like the old days, I wouldn't give much thought to what I was seeing now. I'd pass if off as a hallucination or a mirage, a drug-induced vision, the side-effect of a night's hard partying. But those days were over, and I was not as high as a kite. I was stone cold sober. Which is why I couldn't make any sense of what I was seeing now.

There was a child in my locker. A small boy, who I guessed to be aged eight or thereabouts. He was standing in big locker, on my jacket and handbag. He had a pale face and two sparkling blue eyes. His hair was a light-brown, and he was grinning at me, showing off two large buck-teeth. He was wearing a weird, old fashioned outfit. Had to be. His coat was dirty and brown, and he wore one of those weird flat-cap hats a lot of kids used to wear back in the Victorian times. But be also wore a pair of grey shorts which stopped at his knees, something which surely wouldn't have been allowed in the Victorian times. They were instead fresh out of the 1940's. He had long, grey socks and smart black shoes, shoes which were standing on my things!

"Who are you?" I demanded. "What you doing in my locker, kid? What's going on?"

The boy giggled. "Hide and sheek!" He told me. Only now did I register the pronounced lisp in his shrill voice.

"Right," I said slowly, "but your standing on my things."

"Shorry," the kid giggled, his crooked smile widening.

"Good lad," I said softly, "but who are you? Why are you up here? This is the staff area, kid. If your playing hide and seek, your way out of bounds here. You should've hidden in the fruit-and-veg aisle."

The boy made a face. "I don't like fruit and vegetables."

"No, neither do I," I admitted, "look, come on - get out. Your on my stuff."

The boy's giggled again. It was a harsh, rattling sound. He stretched out with his right hand. "I can't...pull me out."

"You what? Course you can get out."

"I'm jammed," he insisted, "shtuck! Help me out!"

I could see he wasn't - he fitted in perfectly...too perfectly, almost. I looked him in the eye. His eyes really were extraordinarily bright, like two little glowing torches.

He wiggled the fingers on his outstretched hand. "Pull me!" He insisted.

I looked at him uncertainly and slowly moved towards him, stretching out my left hand towards him. Then I let it drop.

"Where's your parents?" I demanded. "They shopping downstairs, maybe? Shopping?"

The boy sighed impatiently and wiggled his fingers. "Here! Help me out!"

Again, I slowly lifted my hand. I was suddenly aware that my heart was beating too fast, that the hairs on the back of my neck were up on edge. But why? It was just a kid!

That kid was smiling even wider, rows and rows of white teeth flashing at me. "Help me, Lynshey!" He insisted, beaming.

I reached out for him...

Then the door burst open behind me.

I wheeled around, again dropping my hand. It was the leather-jacket man! The Doctor!

"You!" I gasped. "You can't be in here! It's the ladies!"

The Doctor ignored me. "Get away from it." He said to me urgently. "Just step away from it now."

Another person came through the door. A young woman with blonde hair. She was very pretty. But like the Doctor, she too looked terrified.

"Listen," she said, reaching out for my hand (why was everyone wanting to hold my hand tonight!), "get away from it. It's not a kid. Come on."

Nervously, I glanced back round at the locker. As I did, two things happened. One, I caught another glimpse of the boy's face, and two, the lights went out. The combination of those began to fill me such terror as I'd never experienced in my life, fear stronger and more hideous that I thought it was possible for anyone to endure, fear of such incomprehensible heights that I felt sure I'd drop dead of a heart attack, that I'd collapse to the floor, dead before I hit the ground...

That boy's face was gone; a ghastly monster had replaced it. Red eyes, rows of razor sharp teeth, a long hooked nose and two huge ears. It was growling at me like some sort of wild animal. Then the lights went out.

I threw myself away from the locker just in time - just as I leapt back, crashing over the bench in the middle of the changing room, I heard a woosh and a clatter of metal as the thing that looked like a boy threw itself clear of my locker. I heard the patter of tiny feet, dozens of them, scuttling along the floor like some monstrous insect. I felt something _not human_ move past me. The Doctor cried out in pain as something slammed into him, and burst through the door into the staff room. The lights were off in there as well; probably in the entire store. If it was a power cut, that would wreak havoc on the tills.

But then I heard a familiar buzzing sound, and saw a blue light close by. All at once, the lights burst back into action. The locker room came back into focus. The Doctor was lying against the wall panting. Rose was already pulling him upright. My locker's door had been ripped clean off.

I got to my feet shakily. "Okay," I gasped, "questions..."

The Doctor shook his head, "Nah. See ya. C'mon Rose."

And to my dismay, he was gone. Rose shot me an apologetic look and hurried along after him, back out into the staff room.

"Oi!" I protested, hurrying along after them. I burst into the staff room and ran around past Rose, blocking their path. "Who _was_ that? What's going on here?"

"Yer fine," the Doctor snapped, "focus on that. That thing would have ripped you apart if we hadn't turned up."

"But...it was just a kid!" I said weakly.

The Doctor scoffed. "It was nesting," he told me solemnly, "like bees or wasps who build a nest in some enclosed space. Same wi' that thing. It's a monster. Bye now."

"Oh come on!" The girl protested. "Don't give her the silent treatment! She'll be in shock."

"I bloody won't!" I snapped, ignoring the fact that my legs were shaking. "You tell me right now. _Right now!"_

I sat down on one of the sofa's, and folded my arms, looking up at the Doctor and his friend expectantly. "Let me go through a couple of things," I said, "one, this is the staff room. Two, you ain't staff. Three, I guess your after that kid thing. Four, unless you tell me everything, I'll have security take ya both out. No entry, no catching the monster. How's that?"

The Doctor made a funny face. "Impressive."

"Or," I said, tapping the sofa next to me, "you can explain what this nonsense is about."

The Doctor and his friend looked at each other. "Fair play," the Doctor said finally, "if ya're sure you wanna know, I can 'elp ya there. But I'll tell ya something now; once you've 'eard this, there's no going back. It'll change your life forever. Your prepared for that, are ya?"

I took a moment to consider that. Suddenly, my life flashed before my eyes. Tedious job, grubby little flat, criminal record, useless parents who I never saw...

"Yeah." I replied, meaning it. "I'm prepared for that. Who are you? Doctor Who?"

* * *

 ** _The Doctor's Diary, Entry 1971_**

* * *

 _Well...saved another life today. That girl nearly got killed. It was the same girl, believe it or not! Lynsey Perron. The same one I met on the checkouts the other day. The Whispering nearly had her! If we hadn't turned up when we did...if we'd been even a second later..._

 _As far as catching the thing goes, we ain't any closer. It's fast, it's powerful and it knows how to defend itself. It can rip people in half, it can suck vast quantities of power from the area, it can manipulate people into doing it's bidding. But it's most astute ability is it's self-defence. It doesn't hold it's own in a fight, it makes it so it's more or less impossible for anyone to fight it. It's a monster from another dimension, but who among us heroes would ever hurt a little child? Even when we know what it truly is..._

 _All this, I told Lynsey Perron. I told her what it was (as best as I myself understand what it is), and I told her we were trying to catch it. It's completely lethal. It doesn't belong in this universe, let alone in a supermarket on Earth._

 _Me and Rose have been chasing it for days now, all through time and space (that part, I didn't tell Lynsey). Even when it's cornered, like it was today, it just blacks out the lights and scarpers._

 _So what now? Well, Lynsey went home, frightened out of her wits and traumatized. I doubt I'll ever see her again. Tomorrow, me and Rose are gonna finish this once and for all. Either we'll catch it, and we'll leave 2020 for good...or we'll both be horribly killed. One of those two._

 _Wish us luck. Tommorrow it's on._


	3. Lynsey's Story III

The Doctor made me promise to keep all this to myself. I said I would. Promised him I would. I left the store that night, shaken, but with every intention of honouring that promise.

I got home at seven. I had a chat with flatmate Steph. She works in an office, and thus doesn't have Thursday off, so didn't stay up late. I sat down in front of the telly, as planned. I ate the Minstrels as planned, allowing Steph to take a modest handful before she went to bed. I watched some garbage reality show, as planned. I went to bed at one in the morning. And I didn't sleep until gone four, waking up at seven in cold sweats.

And then I broke my promise.

* * *

 ** _24th November 2020_**

* * *

"No offence," Steph exclaimed, "but you sounding like a total whackjob!"

"Well I know!" I insisted. "It sounds stupid. Ridiculous, even."

"Now, Lynsey," Steph said slowly, scrutinizing me over the breakfast table, "be honest now, you know I won't tell - are you on the speed again?"

"No!" I protested. "If I was, it would have been easier to accept what happened. Coulda passed it off as a hallucination. But I'm clean of all that junk; clean as a whistle, have been for years. You know it."

Steph thought it through. She was twenty-three, two years younger than me. She was mixed-race, with long black hair which she straightened, and pale brown skin. She was proper cute. Especially now, in her skirt, tights and white blouse; she had to be at work in two hours. I was in my dressing gown, my brown hair wild like a scarecrow's, my narrow face pale. Without sounding my own trumpet, I was reasonably cute as well. I don't mind admitting that to myself, thought I'd never think of saying so. That would be arrogant.

"Well, okay," Steph said finally, "I know your straight. I do."

"Good!" I replied. "But how, therefore, can you disbelieve me? It all happened exactly as I said!"

But Steph shook her head. "Naw. You want to know what I think? Yes, there probably was a kid hiding in your locker last night. He might even have been dressed in those old clothes, though I think if you saw them now, in broad daylight, they'd look a lot more normal. Yes, two customers came in to get him, probably his parents, and"-

-"No, the Doctor was forty at least. The girl was younger than both of us, by the looks of her."

"Father and older sister then. He ran out in a strop, and the store _just so happened_ to have a power cut at that moment. That happens. We all know it happens. But your tired, Lynsey."

"I am! Working in that dump _makes_ me tired!"

"Exactly. Which is why I think, after a long hard slog of a day at work, you let your imagination get away with you. No, he didn't turn into a monster. Okay, maybe this Doctor did spin you a crazy tale about monsters and stuff. He was winding you up, Lyn!"

"So explain what he did with the till the other day." I said quietly, not allowing myself to get angry. Of course she'd be doubtful. Anyone would be.

"I dunno," Steph admitted, "something clever. Look, I'm not calling you a liar, bubs. I'm calling you knackered. Your worked to the bone, ain't ya? All I do it sit at a desk all day, listening to music and filling out spreadsheets. You, however, spend all day pulling stuff through a bloody till. Yet still, I earn double your yearly income. Crazy world, this."

"Crazy," I admitted. I knew I was right. I know what I saw. But Steph couldn't believe it...would anyone believe it?

Steph got to her feet, checking her watch. "I gotta go. You, just chill today. Feel free to hoover at some point though."

"I just might," I agreed, amicably enough. Steph pulled on her work jacket and grabbed her car keys from the kitchen side. We lived in a studio flat; one room which served as the kitchen, living room and dining area, with three doors off at the sides; bathroom, my room, Steph's room. It was pleasant enough. Council housing, yes. But it was in a nice area of town (more on my hometown later). The council had put me and Steph together here quite delibaratley. I was classified as a vulnerable person. Put me in a grim council estate, rife with drugs and crime, and I'd sink back to me old ways sooner than you can say "help, there's a creepy kid in my locker!". Put me in a nicer area, paired up with a sensible, straightforward nine-to-five gal like Steph, and maybe, just maybe, I'd get my life back on track.

So far, it had worked. We'd lived together four years. In all that time, I hadn't touched an illicit substance.

Me and Steph had hit it off right from the off. She'd finally reached the top of the council housing list, and was able to finally move out of her parent's house and get her own place. But she (understandably) hadn't been best pleased to discover that she'd be sharing said place with a recovering junkie with a criminal record. She'd nearly turned down the offer and wait another five to ten years for a better home.

She was glad she hadn't. But not as glad as me. She didn't fear nor pity me, and I didn't look up to her. We were just great friends. We got on. For the first time in my life, I had a mate who wasn't always trying to get me high.

I watched as she got her things together and made for the door. I watched her go, slightly forlorn, but entirely understanding. No way would anyone believe that story. Fair enough. Nobody would believe that without having seen it for themselves.

Having seen it for themselves...

 _DING DING! IDEA!_

"Say, Steph," I called after her, jumping up and catching her outside in the corridor. "What you up to tonight? Anything?"

Steph shrugged. "Not really. Why?"

I grinned. "What say we go shopping tonight?"

* * *

"We are _so_ gonna get arrested." Steph moaned for the hundredth time later that day, as we sat in her car outside the supermarket, McDonalds wrapping on our laps. Midnight feast.

"Look, I didn't make you come," I hissed, "if you want out, go home. I'll be fine."

"I'm serious!" Steph said urgently. "This is trespassing! It's nearly midnight! We'll spend the night in a police cell for this!"

"It's all right, I've done it before." I said mildly.

"But _I_ haven't!" Steph moaned.

"Then go home! I'll call a taxi or something."

"Well, maybe I will!" Steph snapped.

"Fine," I snapped back, "or don't. But I ain't arguing. I'm gonna go in, and then-"

I stopped abruptly. Across the car park, I got a flash of blonde, which stood out against the murky grey of the darkened car park. I squinted - about twenty feet away, was a familiar pair of figures; one short, blonde and dressed in a pink hoodie. The other barely distinguishable in the dark, dressed in black leather.

"Over there!" I exclaimed. "That's them!"

Without waiting for Steph, I leapt out of the car and raced across the car park, my feet slapping against the concrete loudly. "Doctor!" I exclaimed.

The Doctor wheeled around in astonishment, clutching his chest. "What _you_ doing here?" He exclaimed staring at me in surprise. Behind me, Steph was jogging along towards us. She pointed her car key behind her and locked the car (a blue Nissan Micra).

"I came to help," I said, nodding my greetings at Rose, "after yesterday. You told me you were gonna try catching it today, right?"

"Well...yeah, but..." the Doctor spluttered. He gazed from me, to Rose and to Steph.

Rose just shrugged. "We'll need all the help we can get, right?"

"And who are you?" the Doctor asked Steph.

"Steph Johnston, Lynsey's flatmate," Steph replied sullenly - she wasn't enjoying this. Not one bit.

The Doctor sighed in exasperation. "Look, I'm touched. I appreciate the offer, yeah? But this is dangerous!"

"So you say," Steph muttered under her breath. She had her arms folded across her stomach against the cold, and her teeth were chattering. I wasn't faring much better, nor was Rose. The Doctor, however, seemed totally indifferent to the freezing November air.

He glared at Steph, and a look of understanding crept onto his face. "Ohh. Right. I get ya now," he told me sternly, "you've brought 'er along to prove a point 'aven't ya? Lemme guess; you told 'er everything, and when she didn't believe it, you decided to come here an' vindicate yourself."

I shrugged. "What of it? I still wanna help."

The Doctor tutted in frustration. He glanced at Rose. "What d'ya reckon?"

"What? About them?" Rose asked, seeming surprised to have been asked her opinion. "I dunno...I guess we will need all the help we can get."

"Yeah," I said enthusiastically, "so what's the plan?"

The Doctor scoffed. "No real plan. Just gonna try our luck and 'ope for the best. We know how to catch it. It's jus' the doing it which will be the problem. Basically, when it gets to midnight, we go in. I'll set off the fire alarms with me sonic screwdriver, get all the night-workers out. Then I'll use it to lock all the doors, trapping the Whispering inside."

"And us with it, of course." Rose added sarcastically.

"Right. When it's cornered, it'll probably show itself fairly sharpish. Think of it as a wild animal; it's flight or fight, innit? When flight's off the cards, all that's left it fight. Remember - it doesn't look dangerous, but it is. Do _not_ be fooled by the cute kid act. It's _not_ a child. Do _not_ let it fool you."

"Question." Steph interjected suddenly.

The Doctor looked at her with raised eyebrows. "Go ahead."

"Now, I'm not saying I believe any of this crap. But just say that I did for a moment - why are _you_ handling this? Wouldn't it be a job for the army?"

"Yeah, probably," the Doctor admitted, "but they'd do something stupid like try and kill it. We mustn't."

"Why?" I asked.

"Coz if it's killed by any violent means, it'll explode with the force of fifteen nuclear bombs. Trust me - I know. Me an' Rose 'ave been chasing it for ages now, and it's been very tempting to kill it. But we can't. Not here. We need to capture it, and destroy it humanely. Do think of it as a bomb. Whack it on the side, it'll explode. But isolate it and defuse it, you'll be destroying it safely. That's what I'm gonna try and do - destroy it by defusing it, rather than destroying it by settin' if off. You get where I'm comin' from?"

"I guess..." I lied.

"And we catch it," Rose said, beaming, "with these!" She pulled a small, grey metal ball out of her pocket. There was a blue button on top. She tossed one each to me and Steph. "Hit the button and throw it at the Whispering. It'll be sucked into it. These are dimension traps. But it's fast - darn fast. That's why we've taken to long to catch it."

"But today's it, for sure." The Doctor said. "This has gone on long enough. We're not leaving the supermarket, and there ain't nobody comin' in until we get it."

"Like I said," Steph said weakly, gazing at the ball in her hand, "spending the night in a police cell..."

"Final chance," I said to her, "I'm going with 'em. If you want out, I don't mind."

Steph considered. I could tell she was half an inch from backing out. I could see how much she wanted to just go home. It was a work night! She should be in bed! Not breaking into a supermarket. I could see in her eyes how close she came to backing out. I always remember that. Looking back, I wish so much that she had, that I'd never brought her her at all.

But tragically, she shook her head. "Whatever," she replied finally, "I'll come."

I grinned. She half-returned it. She knew she was making a mistake. She didn't know that she'd lose her life as a result of it. Nor did I, at the time. How could I known that? You think I'd have brought her if I had? I trusted the Doctor! I trusted him to keep us safe...

* * *

 ** _The Doctor's Diary, Entry 1972 Part 1_**

* * *

 _Oh, girls, I'm so sorry..._

 _I should've sent them home...I really, really should. I wish I had. Me and Rose were about to head in when they rushed us in the car park. Frightened the living daylights out of me! And I did something stupid - I let them help! What's wrong with me? Why did I do that?_

 _I'm arrogant. That's what it is. I'm an arrogant fool. I was flattered that Lynsey found me interesting enough to come back for...her mate knew it was a stupid move. She went along with it anyway. I was flattered, and I led them into danger, and I shouldn't have._

 _But I did it nonetheless. Rose handed them a dimension trap each, and into the dragon's lair we went..._

* * *

 **END OF CHAPTER**

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Just with regards to the title, this story is a very loose sequel to a previous story of mine, titled "Will You Come?" (for obvious reasons, recently renamed "Will You Come? I").

To clarify, whilst this is set in the same "canon" as the first one, it's got no strong connections to the previous story. The first one was the story of Clara asking several former companions, and a future Doctor, to come and help her defeat an evil Time Lord. This story puts an entirely different spin on the question; it's the story of the Doctor asking Lynsey to come with him, and the adventures they share together (or so it seems).

There is absolutely no need to read the first story before starting this one. This one will stands up just fine as it's own story. But if you want to read the first one, by all means do! :)


	4. Lynsey's Story IV

Okay, so I admit it; once the Doctor tripped the fire alarms, evacuated the shop and sealed us inside...that's when I became just a little bit nervous. It was just all moving very quickly...a few short days ago, I was living a normal life. Workin' full time, vegging out in front of the telly on me days off, all the usual stuff. And now here I was - a bargain basement cat burglar, breaking into my place of work at the dead of night. All for a man and a girl I barely knew...

So, alone in the shop, the four of us split - the task in hand was simple enough on paper. Search every nook and cranny. Every small space, every cupboard and hidey-hole, where the Whispering might be holed up. But, as the Doctor accurately predicted, the Whispering would in all likelihood show itself once it realized it was locked in. We then, quite simply, had to capture it in one of the Dimension Trap balls. The only catch was that we had to be done in twenty minutes or less. The fire brigade would turn up, with the police, and quite simply break into the store. The Doctor's magic wand could lock the doors, but it couldn't fortify the place. We had to hurry.

It was hurrying which got Steph killed. Poor Steph. But not only her...

We took the staff area, whilst the Doctor and Rose covered the shop floor...

* * *

 ** _Midnight, 25th November 2020_**

* * *

"Ready?" I asked Steph through gritted teeth, as we stood before a large walk-in freezer at the back of the store.

Steph's fingers closed around the handle of the freezer. "Yeah..." she whispered, sounding terrified.

"All right," I said, holding the Dimension Trap up above my head, ready to lob it into the freezer if I caught the slightest glimpse of anything moving in there. "One...two...three... _go_!"

Steph wrenched open the freezer door, and I tightened my grip on the small metal ball in my hand. Adrenaline surged through my body, only to be cut short as soon as I saw inside the freezer - there were rows and rows of freezing meat products, but no child-shaped alien.

I sighed, and Steph slammed the door shut. "Not in there." I said dejectedly.

"No," Steph muttered, checking her watch for the hundredth time. We'd been searching five minutes. We had only five left. The Doctor had cut the alarms after sealing off the shop; the silence was incredibly eerie, considering the usual hustle and bustle of the shop, even back here in the staff rooms.

We walked from the food storage area and upstairs to the staff room, where I'd encountered it the other day.

"This is crazy," Steph moaned, not for the first time that night, "absolutely mad."

"Yeah," I admitted, "yeah, it is...but don't you _feel_ it? When you talk to him?"

"Who? What, the Doctor, you mean?"

"Yeah! He's _amazing_!"

"Is he?" Steph grumbled, "strikes me that he's just the most insane thing about this whole messed up night."

"Well," I shrugged, "maybe so...but there's something different about him. Have you noticed his eyes?"

"Not really." Steph said bluntly. Quite suddenly, she stopped.

I glanced at her. "What?"

She nodded up at the ceiling above us. I looked; there was a hatch up there. I'd never paid it any mind before. A hatch with a handle, presumably leading to some sort of space between the ceiling and the roof. It was about ten feet above us, however.

We looked nervously at each other. "Well...I guess we should check it..." I said reluctantly.

"Should we?" Steph replied, gulping. "Really?"

Grimly, I bent down. "I'll give you a leg up." I told Steph.

She stared at me. "Why am I going up there?"

"Coz you saw the hatch," I grinned, "this one's all your's, babes."

Steph kicked her trainers off and, muttering some more about the stupidity of the situation we'd been catapulted into, climbed onto my shoulders. With enormous difficulty, I stood up, taking care to make my legs take her weight, as opposed to my back.

"Crikey," I groaned, finally standing upright. "Can you reach?"

" _Nearly_..." Steph replied. I gritted my teeth as her toes dug hard into the soft part of my shoulders, as she stood on tip-toe to try and reach the hatch. With a final groan and a surge of pain on my shoulders, she managed to grab hold of the hatch. The strain on me lessened as she took some of her weight off by clutching the handle.

"Does it open up or down?" I asked her.

"Down," she replied, "hold my ankles, I'm gonna try pulling it open."

"Right." I said, clutching her tightly. I felt her wobbling like crazy as she tried to pull the hatch down. I heard a scraping noise from above.

 _"Won't...budge..."_ Steph exclaimed, pulling it hard.

But then, of course, it did. With an ear-splitting crumbling noise, the hatch came clear of the ceiling, dropping to the floor with a thud. Steph tumbled from my shoulders at once, but managed to land on her hands and knees. My neck shot up in pain as her weight pulled me down too. We lay there, sprawled on the floor, the discarded trapdoor hatch to our side. I peered up from my new position on the floor, and saw a darkened square in the ceiling. Too late, I realized that it would be extremely difficult to get up there. There was no ladder, and even if Steph stood on my shoulders, I doubted if she'd have the strength to pull herself the whole way up. I knew I wouldn't.

I was about to suggest we call for the Doctor, when I got the first shock of that evening;

"What're you doing?" Bellowed a thunderously deep voice from behind us. "What in the blazes do you think your doing?"

Both me and Steph screamed, and leapt to our feet. Standing over us was a huge man with a very familiar face. His name was Paul (Big Paul), the security supervisor. I seldom spoke to him, but I'd recognize him anywhere. He was a wall. A living, breathing wall. He was twice as wide as me and Steph put together, and it was all muscle. He wore a black t-shirt and trousers, with bare arms revealing countless tattoos. His black hair was close-cut and he had a spectacularly flabby face, no doubt the effect of taking steroids.

Only after we screamed and jumped up did he recognize me.

"You work on the tills," he said, his big brown eyes narrowing. "Lauren?"

"Lynsey," I corrected, massaging my heart, "what are you doing here? The fire alarm-"

"-Was set off by your buddy," Paul growled. "Oh yeah - ever heard of a little thing called CCTV, my love? I recognized him as well; he's that weird dude who spent like the whole day wandering around 'ere the other day."

"What of it?" I asked weakly.

"What of it? You, poppet, are in trouble. That's what! Breaking and entering! What're ya playing it? After the valuables, I'll warrant. Not that you'd have found any up there."

"Where's the Doctor?" I demanded.

"Oh, prancing around downstairs. I'll go get 'im and his chum when you two are dealt with." A cruel smile was tugging at Paul's face.

"Please, mate..." I said helplessly, "just hear the Doctor out...we ain't here to steal nothing, I promise."

"Tell it to the coppers," Paul said softly.

Then he bent down to pick up Steph's discarded trainers (electric blue) and in doing so revealed what was behind him.

Steph saw it first. "Lyn..." Steph said, her round eyes widening. She grabbed my arm. I looked. Behind Paul, just standing there in the middle of the corridor, at the top of the staircase, was a small boy in an old fashioned brown coat and cap.

"Get down!" I screamed at Paul, sending the Dimension Trap flying through the air, a magnificent overarm throw that sent it towards the creature like a missile. But, contrary to my instructions, Paul was already rising, and it bounced off his head with an (in other circumstances funny) bopping noise, rolling down the corridor uselessly. He cried out and clutched his head, before wheeling around to see what we were staring at.

"Who're you, son?" Paul demanded.

"Get back from him," I whispered to Paul, grabbing the man's big tree trunk arm and trying to pull him away. But too late. With an otherworldly screech, the alien rushed him. Paul barely had time to cry out, as he was lifted clean off the floor. Steph and me watched in disbelief as the child, less than five-foot in height and weighing well under ten stones, lifted the titan above his head, six foot five inches and nearer twenty stone than ten. He threw Paul against the wall, splintering it and cracking Paul's head with a sickening _crunch_. The man slumped to the floor and began to twitch and throb in a violent seizure, and I knew that if he wasn't dead, he'd be so before any ambulance could arrive.

Steph burst into horrified tears (all doubts about the Whispering swept away) and hurled her own Dimension Cannon wildly, not pausing to take aim. It missed by a mile and clattered down the stairs. The Whispering watched it go, that familiar buck-toothed smile spreading across it's lips.

"Who wash that to, Stheph?" It lisped, giggling.

"What are you?" Steph moaned, backing away, sobbing. I moved back with her, my eyes focused on my own Dimension Cannon, which lay a few feet behind the Whispering. The creature advanced on us, hissing like a cat. It's eyes travelled from me to Steph, back to me. Finally, it's gaze settled on Steph. Suddenly, it didn't look like a child anymore - the features were warped and distorted, the limbs all out of proportion. It's arms were growing, the nails spouting sharp talons. Sharp talons which were buzzing with some sort of blue lightning.

"Nighty-night, pretty!" It said to Steph. Before my best mate of four years even had the chance to scream, it's arm shot out and grabbed her around the neck. She tripped backwards, her bare feet tangling up as she made one final attempt to run. Electricity was pulsing through the monster's arm and into Steph's body.

"No!" I cried helplessly. "No, no, no, no!" I tried to pull the creature off, but it sent me flying through the air with it's free arm. I felt a peculiar sensation in my stomach just before I took off. Then I shot backwards I crashed, hard, onto the floor and felt something in my back shift as I landed. Shooting agony shot through my spine, and I realized with horror that I couldn't move anything below my waist. I looked down and was horrified to see a huge, gaping wound in my stomach...it had stabbed me! It's free arm had become some hideous, razor sharp appendage.

I looked at Steph. My eyes met her's for the last time. She was staring at me, an look of sheer terror etched on her face. Behind that, an accusation. _You brought me here_ , her eyes were saying, _and now I'm gonna die!_

She _did_ die; quite suddenly she disintegrated on the spot, her body exploding into a cloud of ashes, clothes and all, the dust settling on the floor.

" _Steph_!" I cried, trying to move, but being met only with an unbearable bolt of agony in my back. I knew she was dead. I caught a glimpse of her discarded trainers from earlier, and started to cry helplessly on the floor. The creature stood over me, no longer even trying to look like a child. It was a monster; some sort of writhing, shifting entity with waxy inhuman features and several limbs, which grew and shrunk of their own accord. Looking at it gave me a headache. I couldn't comprehend what I was looking at, my brain had nothing with which to reference what I was seeing now. And it hurt! It hurt so much! I screamed in agony, and shut my eyes, waiting to be turned to dust like Steph. I deserved it. I brought her to her death. I didn't deserve to go on.

"Oi, mate!" Came a familiar northern burr from somewhere nearby, "pick on someone yer own size!"

I opened my eyes. Thankfully, the Whispering had reverted to the form of the boy. Behind it, having emerged from the staff room, was the Doctor and Rose. The Doctor was grinning, like he had been that day with the rude customer, but like that day his eyes were telling an entirely different story. They were glowing with fury.

He looked at Paul's now still body, and then down at me. "I'm sorry." He told me solemnly, his eyes travelling to the empty trainers, and the pile of dust on the floor. "Is she dead?"

I screwed up my face against fresh tears and nodded. The Doctor snarled and turned back to the Whispering.

"Now look 'ere," he told it, "this 'as gone far enough."

"It hash," the Whispering agreed, "I warned you not to follow me. I gave you fair chanche to leave me."

"You did," the Doctor agreed, "you nearly got away from me at Locus Heights, didn't ya? An' before that on Yaed. But not this time."

His eyes flickered to me, ever so briefly, yet somehow, in that nanosecond, I understood exactly what he wanted of me. I glanced behind me; the Dimension Trap was there. Less than ten feet away. I tried my legs again, but there was no movement. I'd hit the floor with immense force, and for the first time, I noticed that my head was bleeding.

 _But I could still crawl._

"Tell me then," the Doctor growled (distracting the Whispering), "what now? You can't get out. I've put a dimension border 'round the whole store, mate. The humans can get in, but you can't get out. _End it."_

I bit my lip hard against the agony of moving; I managed to pull myself along the floor an inch, two inches...the pain from my wound and my wrecked spine was beyond all belief, and tears rolled down my cheeks. But I bit my lip tighter. If I cried, it would see what I was doing. Bracing myself, I took another slide along the floor towards the little metal ball. I wondered why the Doctor or Rose didn't use their's, but then I thought of how quickly the thing got away last night, how astonishingly fast it could move. It could cut the power at any time and scarper...but was the Doctor telling the truth? Was it confined forever to the store now? I hoped so.

I edged further along. Behind, I could hear the Doctor still talking to it, Rose as well.

"Listen," Rose said, "this has got to stop, and you know it. We'll never stop chasing you. Will we, Doctor?"

"Never," the Doctor said solemnly, "I'm sorry. Your a hunter, I know. It's you instinct. I get it. I do. But you don't belong in this universe. Just by being 'ere, your damaging the fabric of reality!"

The Whispering chuckled (the laugh icy, rattling and cruel). "Tell me then, Doctor," it said, it's voice no longer high pitched and lisping. It was now dry, husky and deep. "Tell me...how much are you prepared to lose to stop me?"

I turned around to watch, still edging towards the ball. I was close now...very close. And it hadn't noticed me yet!

I watched the Doctor frown. "What d'you mean?" He asked urgently. But then Rose doubled over, clutching her head and gasping.

"Doctor..." she moaned helplessly.

"Ach, no, no!" The Doctor cried, grabbing Rose, and looking into her eyes, "no! Let her go! Don't do this! Just end it!"

To my horror, Rose's hands closed around the Doctor's throat. He pulled her off easily, but she struggled to hurt him in whatever way possible. "Kill the girl!" The voice cried, the noise seeming to come somehow from Rose's mouth and the Whispering's at the same time. "You use that weapon, Doctor, and I'll burn out her brain! I'll have time! You wanna end it? End it! End it now! Be alone again, Time-Lord!"

"Let her go!" The Doctor wailed, still fighting Rose off, who was trying relentlessly to strange him. Except she wasn't; she wasn't doing anything. The Whispering was doing it through her. Using her.

"You ain't got the guts, have you?" It hissed. "Too scared to travel alone, too scared to let someone else die! Your a coward! And I'll take you! I'll take both of you! Then I'll take Lynsey Perron!"

I inched a little further towards the ball. Then, with a final burst of effort, I stretched out my arm and felt my hand close around something hard and metal. However, that movement sent pain beyond all imagination soaring through me, accompanied by a stomach-churning grinding from somewhere in my ruined back. I cried out in agony, and the creature wheeled around. I threw the Dimension Cannon wildly.

And I hit it directly on the head.

The Whispering screamed in a cold fury as the ball stuck to it's flesh and started glowing green. I tried to grin triumphantly, but the agony prevented that. Instead I blacked out...somewhere at the back of my mind, I was aware of just how hideously injured I truly was; I could feel blood on the floor around my head, could taste it in my mouth and feel it flowing from my nose, and of course continue to spurt from the wound in my stomach. I opened my eyes weakly again, and vaguely registered the Doctor hugging Rose tightly, and the boy-shaped creature being absorbed into the little metal ball. My vision was going blurry and darkening up.

And I was sure I was gonna die...I could _feel_ it...

My eyes opened again. "Hey, hey" the Doctor said bending down and touching my arm gently. His wise blue eyes looked down on my lovingly, and he smiled. "You did it!" He told me.

My vision closed up again, but I heard his voice regardless.

"You'll be fine, Lynsey. I'll fix ya up. Just stay with us..."

* * *

 ** _The Doctor's Diary, Entry 1972 Part 2_**

* * *

 _Poor Steph. Poor security guy, who's name I never knew. And poor Lynsey..._

 _But we did it! She saved us! Cor blimey, it was touch and go for a moment there. It tried to take Rose! My Rose! It got into her head, and tried to burn her mind out! It would've done as well, if Lynsey hadn't got it by surprise._

 _I've destroyed it. It's over. Incinerated the Dimension Trap which contained it, burning it out of existence forever. It wouldn't have suffered. It wouldn't have known anything about it, once it was trapped in there. I wish there had been another way, yeah. I'd sooner have returned it to it's own universe. But I can't. My people could have done it. They_ would _have done it...but they're gone. They're all gone._

 _Rose will recover quickly enough, hopefully with no side-effects. Lynsey, however, is a different story._

 _She's hurt. Very badly hurt. I told her she'd be fine. That I'd make her well again. And if I do that, I'll ask her to come away with me and Rose. Rose agrees. We'll be a team._

 _If she recovers..._

 _In my hearts, I know she probably won't. Even the best medicine probably can't save her now. Her spine's broke, her insides are mashed (the internal bleeding is massive), and her skull is fractured. So no - I'm hoping for the best, but expecting the worse. I were just too much of a coward to tell her that. I told her she'd be fine..._

 _I've got a plan. I'm gonna try my best for her. Let's see if my best is enough..._


	5. INTERVAL - Will You Come?

"Wh...what's happening?" I murmured. My eyes were shut, but some weird light was being shone right in my face, lighting up my closed eyelids so that I saw a strange red-orange colour. And someone was with me.

"Where am I?"

"Keep calm." came a firm, male voice from somewhere far away. A familiar voice. "You'll be fine. Just relax. You did it, Lynsey! Saved us. Stopped the monster. When it comes to it, 'uman will always overcome monster. But things took a turn. You've sustained terrible injuries. D'you recognize me?"

"Nearly." I muttered, suddenly realizing that I wasn't talking at all. That I _couldn't_ talk, in fact. I was _thinking_ my replies, yet still they were heard.

"It's me," the voice said, "the Doctor...come on, Lynsey. Happen it's time ya woke up."

* * *

 ** _Somewhere, Sometime_**

* * *

I woke up with a start. I was sitting on a familiar bench, viewing a familiar view; I was at the promenade! From where I sat, I could see the muddy, grey estuary and, beyond that, Nywell on Crouch, the ugly sister village of my hometown. To my right were the promenade's four food kiosks - all of them serving the same sort of food, (burgers, ice creams, cheesy chips, yada yada) apart from the last one which served slushes, hot drinks and ice lollies only.

"Welcome home," said a woman's voice in my left ear. I yelped and wheeled around where I sat. Sitting beside me on the bench was a young blonde woman.

"Rose?" I gaped at her incredulously.

"Yep." Rose said, grinning at me. "Nice place, your town. What's it called?"

"Uh...um..." it took me a couple of seconds to remember, "Wallbridge."

Rose nodded. "Good. That's very good. Sorry, the Doc told me to check your memory."

"The Doctor?" I asked uncertainly. I looked all around me. It was all quite normal. I was sitting down at the promenade in Wallbridge, Kent, the town I'd lived my whole life. It was enough; a little seaside(ish) town with no beach, but a promenade (where I sat now) and a load of marshy, wild estuary. It had a town (charity shops, pubs and kebab houses), a retail park (no cinema) and a bowling alley (dirty, outdated and overpriced). There was no nightlife. There was little for younger people like myself to do. It was just enough. Not good. Across the estuary was the aforementioned dump that was Nywell on Crouch.

There was a school, of course. My old school took pride of place in the middle of town, an ugly red-brick building, complete with graffiti on the walls, a messy playing field and the smell of chips and grease in the corridors. But I didn't talk about my school days. Hate to sound like a walking cliche, but school was where it all went a bit wrong for me. But I _ain't_ a cliche, coz unlike a cliche I sorted myself out! Got a job, got a flat, got a life.

 _Except that I didn't have any of that now. I'd been killed._

I examined my body carefully, looking for any signs of the injuries I'd sustained. I could see no damage anywhere. I felt no pain. Just a strange, surreal feeling of being in two places at once. On the one hand, I was lying down with some weird light being shone right at me, warming my skin. On the other hand, I was sitting upright on a bench outside, the cool sea air washing gently over me...

"Am I dead?" I asked Rose bluntly. "If I'm dead, tell it to me straight."

"Well," Rose said ponderously, gazing at me with interest, "no you ain't. Don't get me wrong, you ain't doing too good. The real you, I mean. In-"

"Excuse me?" I said at once. "The real me? What's that supposed to mean, dare I ask?"

Rose smiled. "I get why he likes you," she said with a giggle, "but sure you can ask. Where would you say you are now?"

I looked around, taking in the scene with forensic attention to detail. It felt real; it looked real, it smelled real (salty sea air, mixed with deep-fat-fryer food from the kiosks), yet there was nobody around despite it being early evening.

It was the temperature which gave it away. I mentioned the cool sea air, didn't I? Well, that's all well and good. In the summer. But it wasn't the summer, was it? It were late November. That sea breeze ain't _cool_ in the winter. It don't _wash over_ you in the winter. It's darn well _freezing_ this time of year! It _bites_ you. Which means...

"I don't think I'm where I see," I said finally, "I think I'm lying down someplace. I think I'm badly hurt. This is a dream, right?"

Rose smiled warmly at me. "Great stuff! But I don't think dream's the right word. More like...freaky virtual world constructed from your memories. Sorry...no nice way to put that."

"Uh..." I began uncertainly. "I um...I don't..."

"Don't understand?"

"Not much." I admitted. "Where am I? Where is real me?"

"Right now...in the Tardis. That's the Doctor's home I guess. Mine too now. We're doing what we can for you physically, but-"

"He a good doctor, is he?" I asked sarcastically.

Rose laughed dryly. "The best. Not perhaps a doctor of medicine...but he seems to know what he's doing."

"Well, okay," I said uncertainly, "but that doesn't really explain why I'm here too..."

"Your mentally linked to the Tardis right now," Rose explained, "it's keeping your brain stimulated, building a reality out of your memories. Should stop you...well..."

"Stop me dying?"

"Stop you slipping away, yeah," Rose agreed. "I'm connected to it too, that's how we're talking right now."

"Sure. And the Doctor?"

"Looking after you. The real you. We're taking you to the best hospital in the universe, so he says."

"Right." I nodded.

"The thing is," Rose said, moving closer to me and touching my arm gently, "there's something you should know about me and the Doctor. We aren't you who think. We-"

"Your aliens," I finished, "yeah. I guessed."

"I'm not!" Rose said indignantly, "I'm from this city, but like fifteen years ago. I left in 2005. But the Doctor...he's a different story."

"Who is he?"

"A Time Lord. Last of his kind. I've travelled with him for a few weeks now. But listen...if you...if you do get better. _When_ you get better...will you join us?"

"Will I join you?" I repeated. "How do you mean?"

"I mean...well, it was his idea but I'm all for it too obviously...I mean, will you come? Will you come with us? All of time, all of space."

I stared at her, my mouth dry. To my horror, I started to feel emotional; nobody had ever really wanted me before in that way. Oh, I'd had boyfriends. Plenty. But to actually be invited like that...wow!

"I'd love to," I whispered, "but why me?"

Rose chuckled. "Why _me_? I asked myself that a lot at first. Why did he pick ordinary me out of a city of millions? Finally, I asked him. D'you know what he said?"

"Tell me."

"Why not you?" Rose giggled. "He doesn't know why. He only knows who...and do yourself some justice, babes - you basically saved our lives. The Whispering's gone for good. Nearly had me as well! You saved my life."

I shrugged. "Your welcome."

And then everything went white. I cried out in alarm as a hideous ringing noise filled my ears, accompanied by the noise of some old bells...cloister bells, I thought. I called Rose's name and scrabbled around in the blinding light, my fingers connecting with hers. I heard her scream for the Doctor, and in one strange moment, her face appeared in my vision, her eyes boring into my own.

"What's happened?" I asked urgently.

"Oh flamin' 'eck!" I heard the Doctor speak now. "Not now! No no no! Always at the worst times!"

"What is it?" I heard Rose's voice now.

"Come out now," the Doctor said. "Out of the simulation. You've gotta leave her, Rose. I'm sorry. Back out!"

"No!" I wailed. But too late - I felt Rose pull away from me, and then everything was black, and I knew nothing more...

Until, quite suddenly, my eyes snapped open; snapped open for real, this time.

I groaned. Unlike before, the pain was intense. I was back to reality. I could barely move. The room I was in made no sense, but I was too weak to think much of it; it was a dome-shaped orange-yellow, with round circles all around the walls. I was lying on three extremely uncomfortable chairs. There was a strange noise in the room, an odd sort of wheezing-groaning hum. It was cold. So cold.

And above me was the Doctor. He smiled down at me with his two marvelous blue eyes.

"Hallo again," he said, beaming, "sorry about earlier...Tardis trouble. You're gonna be just fine, Lynsey. Relax. And when your all better...Rose asked you, didn't she?"

"Yeah," I replied weakly.

"Yeah?" The Doctor said. "And?"

"Yeah." I said again, closing my eyes gently.

"Yeah as in...you'll come?"

"Yeah..." I said feebly, my eyes shut.

"Yeah? Great stuff! Jus' you 'ang on in there Lynsey Perron! The Doctor is in, and your gonna be fine!"

I lose consciousness again.

* * *

 ** _The Doctor's Diary, Entry 1973_**

* * *

 _We tried our best._

 _I should have known it were a lost cause. I think I did know. She'd lost too much blood. But we did our best anyway. I used what little medical expertise I have to stabilize her physically, but the danger was that she'd just slip away from us. So we tried something really quite dodgy, something I wouldn't think of in different circumstances; hooking her mind up to the heart of the Tardis._

 _Yeah, that's every bit as dodgy as it sounds. I mean, it's all right from her perspective. It just builds a nice little dreamscape for her, based on her own memories. Lovely jubbly. From a technical point of view, it's less "dreamscape" and more "bloody nightmare". Pardon my French. A lot can go wrong._

 _Rose being Rose insisted on linking up with her. I advised her not to, but she wouldn't hear of not doing it..._

 _And you know what, it was going fine. Until the Tardis reacted badly to it. I had to pull Rose out at once, and for a while it looked as though we'd lost Lynsey. But nah. Being frankly marvelous, I quickly managed to shut down the dreamscape, stabilize Lynsey and stop the Tardis from misbehaving. Seemed strengely reluctant to let Lynsey go at first..._

 _Lynsey Perron woke for real about an hour later. I told her she'd be fine, I comforted her. I told her how very welcome she'd be to join me and Rose. And she agreed to come!_ _What a laugh it would've been. Sadly, however, she took a turn for the worse shortly after that. Despite my best efforts, Lynsey died two hours ago._

 _Lynsey - the times we would have had, darling...thank you for my life. Thank you for Rose's life. I can't promise anything regarding my own life, but I promise you this; I'll do everything in my power to keep Rose safe. You saved her, and I'll honour that every day I'm with her, by trying my best to protect her._

 _I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry.  
_


	6. The First Adventure I

Our first adventure (if that's the right word) began almost immediately after I'd recovered. The Doctor was sent a distress call from some city on some far off planet...he wasn't best pleased to get that call. He didn't like the place. But, being the Doctor, we had to go of course. He can't ever ignore a distress call...

* * *

 ** _The First Adventure Part 1_**

* * *

I leapt out of the dirty, uncomfortable seats next to the console, disorientated and groggy. "Woah," I said, steadying myself. "Woah. Seriously?" I rubbed my eyes and stifled a huge yawn. I was quite alone in the big, dome-like console room.

"Hey Doctor?" I called out to thin air.

"Yeah, listening," the Doctor said from somewhere. I realized that the scanner was on. Oh yeah...yeah, we'd landed about a half hour ago. Him and Rose had gone out to investigate. On the scanner I could see him outside the Tardis, trying to fit together some bizarre sort of electronic pole contraption.

"You should've woken me," I protested.

"Ach, ya looked so peaceful," the Doctor replied from outside, not looking up from his work. "Stop yer moaning and get out here."

I walked from the console room and joined him outside. We were parked on the lawn of some foggy, rainy intercity park. All around, grey skyscrapers loomed over us, the lights in the windows winking orange like so many eyes watching us. I shivered, folding my eyes across my body and stamping my feet.

"Cold," I moaned.

"Yep!" The Doctor said brightly.

"Where's Rose?"

"Oh, she's somewhere around," the Doctor said. "Went off to investigate father afield. You good to start workin'?"

"Working?" I exclaimed. "If I'd known we'd be _working_ , I'd never have jumped into that box with you!"

"Well, not working as such...just 'elping out a little. Come on - quicker we sort this little monster problem out, the quicker we can get outta this stink-hole city again."

"Suits me." I agreed. "What do you need?"

"If you could just hold this upright for me." the Doctor asked, waving the long white pole at me. There was a blue light at either end, like a giant ninja stick. I held it straight for him.

"Where are we again?" I asked him.

"Rovrack." The Doctor replied at once. "The city of Rovrack, on the planet Malinus. One of my favourite places in the world."

"Sarcastic much?"

"Much, much," the Doctor agreed. "As sarcastic as they come, Miss. Perron. It's a dump."

"So it is," I said dreamily as the rain lashed down on top of me. I could hear the sound of traffic not so far away. "And why are we here? What _monster problem_?"

"Dunno," the Doctor admitted, sonicking the ninja stick. "There's been attacks. At night. Summin's been killing the citizens, and the Mayor's asked us to come 'an 'elp."

"Oh yeah? Is Rose all right on her own out here?"

"It takes a braver man than me to tell her no," the Doctor chuckled, "she'll be fine. 'Ere - shut the Tardis will ya? Don't want anyone wandering in."

I let go of the stick (the Doctor taking over with it) and shut the door. As I lifted my arm to pull those blue, wooden doors shut, my torso ached. I recoiled slightly - even now, after all this time, the injuries I'd sustained from that first battle gave me the occasional aches and pains.

"So what's with the stick?" I asked, as he gave it a half-hearted (and less than half-successful) twirl, trying to look impressive.

"Sonic spear," the Doctor said casually, "for long-range sonicking. Me poor little screwdriver doesn't 'ave much range, y'know...nah, this'll do the trick much better."

"Yeah, but what trick?"

"Well get this," the Doctor replied, "whatever's doing the killings is a savage. All the victims 'ave been found mutilated. Ripped apart. But...y'know, not gunshot wounds. Not laser wounds. Nah, this thing attack at close range. We use this, we-"

"-your gonna say we're going monster hunting at this point, aren't you?"

The Doctor grinned. "I am. But first, we've got an appointment with the Mayor. Come on - we'll get a cab."

"Why not just use the Tardis?" I exclaimed.

"Nah," the Doctor grinned, "nah, never trust a politician with a time capsule. Rule one of travelling with me, Lynsey. You gotta lot to learn."

"Thanks." I said sarcastically. "And Rose?"

"Will meet us there," the Doctor said, sounding strange unconcerned. "Come on - and listen - you hold the spear."

"Why me?"

"Ya don't look as threatening with it."

Reluctantly I took the pole. "Will this even fit in a cab?"

"Sure!" The Doctor replied.

It did. Just. Nearly broke the window several times, but it did fit. The cab wasn't at all what I had in mind; it was yellow, like the New York taxis. But there, any similarities stopped. The thing hovered, travelling on blue flamed jetpacks as opposed to wheels. Inside, it was grey and clinical, smelling faintly of some overpowering air-freshner. Me and the Doctor saw awkwardly together as the thing snailed through the congested grey streets of the city, heading to the Principal Building, situated on the river which ran through the metropolis.

We arrived about an hour later. The driver (a blue man, no less, but I'd seen those before) looked around, without smiling.

"Twenty-four credits." He said bluntly.

"Ah!" The Doctor said, patting his pockets awkwardly. "Right, um..."

There was a tap at the window. It was Rose, holding a strange piece of paper; alien money.

"Fantastic!" The Doctor exclaimed, leaping out. "Pay the man."

"Trust you to come without cash." Rose laughed, feeding the money through the driver's open window. He took it, muttering thanks, and drove off at once. Service with a smile, eh?

"I stretched my legs and looked up at the building outside which we'd been dropped. It was, on first sight, nothing too special. Much like the big old office blocks in London. It consisted of two beige square structures, with walkways connecting them. Outside, the ground was paved with grey and orange bricks, large exotic pot plants placed on either side of the reception, a glass building from which you could access either of the two towers. I chuckled. They looked and felt very out of place, those exotic green plants. Here it was cold. Here it was always cold, so the Doctor told me earlier. We were in fact visiting in Summer; rain, fog and chilly air. Winter consisted of snow, ice, frost and temperatures consistently below minus twenty. Real nice. I wondered how anybody could tolerate weather like this for their whole life. Quite ironically, in fact, this planet had the opposite climate issue to us - global cooling. Their sun was getting steadily weaker over the generations, and the average temperatures were falling year on year. Far from melting ice caps, this place was turning into a floating permafrost in space. Not that it mattered too much. The civilization here was advanced; when it became too cold to support life, they'd simply up sticks and move out. There was another planet out in space waiting for them. Indeed, the very rich and the very powerful had already moved there.

"How do those plants survive out here?" I demanded.

"Dunno," the Doctor said with interest. Despite there being armed guards in black present outside the entrance, none of them questioned our presence. The Doctor was expected all right. He jogged over to one of the pot plants and laughed. "Fantastic!" He said again. "Come 'ere girls."

We joined him by the pot plant. At once I felt a waft of very warm, dry air from the big pot, a lovely relief from the cool, wet atmosphere of the city. "Heated pots?" Rose laughed.

"Heated pots!" The Doctor confirmed, holding his large hands near the pot and rubbing them together. "Lovely stuff. Anyways...the Mayor."

"Yeah, but can I take this in?" I asked him, wiggling the sonic spear.

"No, ma'am," one of the guards answered on the Doctor's behalf, "certainly not. I'll have to take it, but you'll have it again once you go."

So after handing it over and signing in, we were directed left past reception (into the left tower) and into a set of lifts. The doors were glass, as was the lift inside. It was weird, watching the shaft as the lift rose, all the way to the top floor. The doors opened into a large, blue carpeted waiting area, with a bespectacled young woman on the desk. She wasn't blue; the city was occupied by blue and non-blue people alike.

"Help you?" She demanded.

"Yeah, here to see the Mayor."

"Passes?"

"Sure thing," the Doctor said, showing the psychic paper. "Reception let us through, ya know."

"Yeah, but I don't trust reception," the woman replied smugly, "once let a parcel bomb through into the Mayor's office. Only reason he survived was because I intercepted the package."

"Fair do's." the Doctor admitted. "But we're good, yeah?"

"Yeah, yeah," the woman said, sounding bored. "Have a seat, I'll tell him your here."

We sat down, while the woman on the desk phoned through to the office next door (as opposed to simply getting up and knocking). Almost at once, that door flew open and a small, neat man with blue skin and a little black beard shot out. He wore a black striped suit and an orange tie, with brown loafers.

"Thank you, thank you!" He said in a high pitched voice, wringing the Doctor's hand, before doing the same to me and Rose. "Thank you all for coming so quickly!"

"Pleasure," The Doctor said shortly, "nice to be back. Not really, but me new mate here reckons I'm rude." He nodded to his left, where me and Rose stood. I wonder who of us he meant - we'd both talked to him about his sheer lack of manners before. "So very nice to be back! But not really."

To my surprise, the Mayor only laughed. "Yes, quite! Now Doctor...this situation...I think you and I need a serious chat. It's getting out of hand."

"So you said over the phone," the Doctor replied, "I'm eager to 'elp if I can, of course."

"Then come," the Mayor said. "Come. I'll show you what we're up against..."

He led the three of us into his office and shut the door. As I passed by him, I noticed that he was shaking slightly, his eyes darting around anxiously. He was terrified.

Why, I would discover for myself soon enough.

* * *

 ** _The Doctor's Diary, Entry 1963 Part 1_**

* * *

 _Cor blimey...back to Malinus! Now there's a place I'd hoped never to visit a second time. Rovrack is...all right. It's clean, it's prosperous, it's well ordered. But the weather just never lets up. I mean, it was better this time round. Last time I came here, it were the height of winter. Me poor old bones have never been the same since. The cold got into them, it were that bad._

 _But to Malinus I had to return. There's something seriously wrong here. Some sort of monster stalking the city at night. If I can help, I will. The last time I was here, the Mayor saved my life (not that he was the Mayor back then of course), and thus I owe him a favour. So yeah...get in, get on, get out. That's how I'm viewing this. Next stop, some tropical paradise. If the Tardis co-operates, that is._

 _In other news, my new friend is shaping up well. She's taking it all in her stride, like I hoped she would. I gotta admit, I liked her from the off - from the moment I met her in that little shop. I dunno why, I only know who._

 _So yeah...she ain't best pleased about being here of course. Slept through the landing, I kid you not. But she'll do her bit, like she always does. After that, we'll go and have a laugh somewhere else._

 _Providing we ain't killed horribly by this monster thing, of course. Fingers crossed._


	7. The First Adventure II

The Mayor introduced himself as Sir Clifford Fry, Duke of Rovrack. I nicknamed him Nervous Cliff (not to his face, of course), which I think more befitted his twitchy demeanor. As we sat down on the other side of his large, oak desk, his gaze shot from me, to the Doctor and Rose and then out of the window. He blinked too much and licked his lips every four seconds...oh yeah - he was scared all right.

* * *

 ** _The First Adventure Part 2_**

* * *

"I couldn't think who else to turn to," he began breathlessly, again shaking the Doctor's hand over the desk. "Thank you for coming. Really. Thanks so much..."

"Aye, aye," the Doctor said airily, waving his hand, "I ain't one to shirk me responsibilities, mate. I remember how ya saved me all them years ago, an' I repay me dues."

"What happened?" I asked.

"Well, las' time I met Clifford 'ere, he was a captain in the Malinus Armed Forces. 'Ad a bit of trouble with an insane giant squirrel, and I'd have been dinner if the Mayor hadn't turned up when he did."

"Aren't squirrels vegetarians?" Rose pointed out.

"This one weren't," the Doctor said, "anyhow, let's not worry too much about all that - I'm more interested in what's 'appenin' now. Clifford?"

The Mayor took a long, desperate sigh. "You want a drink?"

"No thanks." The Doctor replied.

"But I do." The Mayor said, reaching into a drawer underneath his desk. He pulled out a bottle of very blue liquid, that looked a little like mouthwash. He took a long gulp, straight from the bottle, and then offered it to the Doctor. "You sure?" The Doctor declined again.

"Ladies?" The Mayor said glumly, shaking the bottle at us. Rose too declined, but my curiosity got the better of me, and I took the bottle.

"Just a swig," the Doctor told me sternly, "that's wicked strong, that is - Martian alcohol."

I shrugged and took a gulp. My mouth exploded in a flurry of pain instantly. It tasted like mouthwash. Exactly like mouthwash. _Was_ it mouthwash? No - mouthwash didn't make the room spin, nor did it turn your vision blurry. I swallowed, feeling it scald my throat as it went down. Just a sensation of course, it wasn't really burning me. But it sure felt like it was. I coughed violently, tears rolling down my cheeks. The Doctor laughed, and patted me hard on the back.

" _Crikey Gonzalez!_ " I moaned, wiping my eyes. I passed the bottle at once back to the Mayor, who took another gulp. The liquid had no obvious effect on him. Blimey, what a tank. Or was I just a lightweight these days? My binge drinking days were well and truly behind me, after all.

"I think," the Doctor said delicately, prising the bottle from the Mayor's unsteady hand, "that the fine city of Rovrack deserves better than a drunken Mayor right now, Clifford. Come on - tell us what's going on here."

"Yeah, right." Clifford said. "Okay...well, I guess it started 'bout a month ago. That's forty-seven days, by the way. I know most planets have shorter months than that. But yeah, that was the first killing. Read about it in the paper...there was this guy. Major druggie. Criminal. All around drop out, pardon me for badmouthing the dead. Well, um...so he died. Long story short. Found ripped to shreds."

"Found where?" Rose asked.

"Some of him was still in his flat." The Mayor replied grimly. "But most of him was in the corridor outside his flat...but look - don't think me an uncaring man here - but criminals meet grisly ends all the time, don't they? So although the investigation turned up nothing at all, nobody thought much of it. Had be stolen drugs? Had he failed to repay his debts to dealers? Had he in fact been the aggressor? No answers were ever forthcoming, but nobody lost sleep on it. Happens all the time."

"But?" I asked, my mouth dry.

"But then it didn't stop," Cliff replied, "random people, all over the city. Found ripped to shreds. Found outdoors, in their own homes, in their cars, at work if they work nights, anywhere...found mutilated beyond belief. Always at night."

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "How many?"

"Seventy-eight."

" _What_?" The Doctor exclaimed. "Seventy-eight? Cor blimey mate, why did you leave it so long to call me? _Seventy-eight?_ "

"Because," Cliff said, "at first I thought - we all thought - that it was just some nutter doing it. A _person._ You popped into my head plenty, but...well you deal with monsters."

"I'd 'ave still come to help." the Doctor retorted.

"I know, I know...and on reflection, I should've called. I wish I had."

"So do I." the Doctor replied.

"Sure...do you know why I finally did? It's coz I saw for myself what was killing these people."

He reached again into his desk drawer and pulled out a disc - like a DVD, only green and smaller. "I'd like you to see it. Cam footage from a subway station downtown. Young woman got attacked...and the whole thing, including the killer, was caught on camera."

"Okay," the Doctor said, "how do we-"

Before he could finish the sentence, the Mayor popped the disk in the middle of his desk, and spoke clearly to it. "Give us the eyes." He said clearly. The disc at once lit up, and above it appeared a hologram image of a subway station. There was a time at the bottom left of the footage; 10929ZP Beta RX.

"Um..." I said.

"Late at night." The Doctor replied shortly. "Don't interrupt."

We watched as a young woman with blonde hair appeared on the platform (the station was a grey, brown colour, aside from the yellow safety line at the edge of the platform). She peered down into the darkened subway tunnel, evidently wondering if a train was coming anytime soon. Her movements were quick and juddery, and I realized that the footage was on fast-forward.

"Any moment now..." Clifford said, biting his nails.

Then, just like that, we saw it. A small figure, dressed in a brown coat and old cap, appeared on screen, rushing at the woman and - here, I shut my eyes - murdering her. When I peeped again, she was gone. Just a pile of blood and shredded flesh on the platform. There was no sign of her killer anywhere. But I'd seen enough. My flesh was creeping and I suddenly felt very cold. I rounded on the Doctor.

"That's impossible," I whispered, "how can that be?"

"I dunno," the Doctor replied, his eyes narrowing, "I honestly don't know Lyn...I killed it!"

"But that _was_ it," Rose exclaimed, "that _was_ the Whispering!"

"It can't be." I muttered.

"But it is!" Rose said. "You saw it! We all did!"

"You _know_ it?" Clifford exclaimed. "What is it? Looks like a child, but there ain't no child alive what could do that to a person."

"It's the Whispering!" The Doctor replied. "But this is impossible...we killed it!"

"Looks like it." Clifford said sarcastically, snatching the bottle back from the Doctor and taking another huge gulp. "And what is the Whispering, dare I ask?"

"A predator." The Doctor said. "From another universe. That's all I know. It's deadly. An' it's clever - nobody knows what it really looks like. We see a kid, but that's just self-defence. Look cute, look defenceless, stay safe."

"Blimey." Cliff slurred. "And it's in _my_ city! Can you stop it? Can you do anything?"

"I think so, yes." The Doctor said thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. "But I'll need some gear. You got labs here, Cliff? Science department perhaps?"

"Well sure," Cliff said hopefully, "in the opposite tower. Why? What d'you need?"

"One, I need me sonic spear back," the Doctor replied, "two, I need an 'andful of Dimension Traps made. They ain't hard if I set ya team along the right lines. Three, I need a map of the city, wi' all the murder scenes pinpointed. Four...er..."

"Yes?" Cliff urged.

"I need someone t' bring the Tardis 'ere..."

"Ahem," I coughed, "you said-"

"-I know what I said, Lyn." The Doctor said. "But no 'elping it really...just keep ya hands off it, Mr. Mayor. Deal?"

"Deal." The Mayor said at once. "Whatever it takes, Doc. Save my city. Do it."

"I will," the Doctor replied, "just as soon as ya stop callin' me Doc. It's Doctor, all right?"

"The Doctor is sensitive about his title," I explained, "he's got a complex. Ain't that right, Rosie?"

"Yep, for sure." Rose laughed, as the Doctor scoffed.

"Anyways..." he said slowly, "so these Dimension Traps. I'll set ya team onto it. And then when I've got me maps, I'm gonna put my frankly amazing brain to work, work out best spot to find it, and then...girls?"

"We catch us a monster!" I exclaimed. "Hopefully for real this time."

"Aye," the Doctor said, "hopefully so. Hopefully so. Now come on - let's get to work."

"What did I say about the "W" word?" I said sternly.

Nevertheless, to work we went...and before long, a plan came together, like it always did. A stupendously dangerous plan, mind you. Always that. But a plan nonetheless...

* * *

 _ **The Doctor's Diary, Entry 1963 Part 2**_

* * *

 _Well this is all a bit grim, really. Turns out to be the legendary "Whispering" entity behind the killings. Oh, for the days when I thought it was only that; a legend. But nah. It's as real as you and I, and twice as angry._

 _Gotta fairly good plan to deal with it though. Dimension Traps! They are_ fantastic _things. Course, you gotta get within throwing range of the enemy to use them...but whatever. We'll give it a shot. Mayor Cliff has invited me and my new buddy back for shots of that blue stuff if we succeed. I'll pass, but happen she'll join him. Great. I'll be carrying her back to the Tardis at this rate...still, I promised her good times, so I guess I can't complain. Just so long as she doesn't hurl in my Tardis._

 _But that's all theoretical for now, of course. We might instead be killed._

 _Such is life._


	8. The First Adventure III

Oh dear...the Whispering. Again. Just the name sends shivers down my spine - the same spine that it broke, I'll remind you now. The thing nearly killed me! Would have done if it weren't for the Doctor.

But we stopped it! How can it be back? Why is it _here_ of all places? Time will tell. Basically, we're gonna use the sonic spear (and yes, we are calling it that) to track it down, then we're gonna bombard it with Dimension Traps. Perfect plan, eh? Foolproof, right? Safe as houses.

No, no and no again. But it's the best that we (all right, he) could come up with. Despite our history with the thing, we know so little about it's true nature. We don't even know what it really looks like, or the full extent of it's powers...

* * *

 _ **The First Adventure Part 3**_

* * *

Myself, Rose and the Doctor crowded around the city's map. We were in the labs, in the right side tower of the Principal Building. On the map (a generic above-view layout of Ravrock, detailing all the streets, train stations and places of interest), were several red blotches of ink - all the murder sites. It was big. Very big, consisting of four distinct districts. To the right, it was mainly suburbia. The centre (where we were now) was the commercial hub of the city, consisting mostly of office blocks and banks. To the west, the smoky, sultry industrial zone of the city - factories, foundries and power plants. That left a tiny little section at the north of the city, which was effectively the slums.

"Fantastic!" The Doctor said shouted, making me and Rose jump.

"What?" We said together.

"Look 'ere," he said, pointing at a random murder side (somewhere off to the north of the city).

"Yep, looking." I said. "And?"

"Now look 'ere," he said, jabbing his finger at another site.

"Okay." I said.

He stared at me. "Serious?"

"What?"

"The subway stations, Perron, the subway stations! Lookit - every site 'as been near a subway station, right? Apart from one which was _in_ a subway station!"

"So you think there's a connection?" Rose asked. "But look how many subway stations are marked on here! You'd be lucky to find a spot that _isn't_ near a station."

Rose did have a point; the subway lines were marked in yellow, the stations represented as yellow dots on the square. And yes, there were a lot of them. Hundreds, even.

"Fair dinkums," I said evenly, "she's right. Basically _everywhere_ is near a subway station here."

"Nah, nah, nah," the Doctor said flippantly, waving his hand through the air as if he was trying to swat away our dissent to his theory, "nah, I'm sure of it girls. Wanna know why?"

"Tell us."

"Coz I ain't got any better ideas whatsoever." The Doctor said firmly. "So this is what we're gonna go with. Any questions?"

"Yes." I said. "I'd like to know how this even helps. Just say it does live in the subway system...that don't narrow it down much. Look how many bloody stations they got!"

"Dat's true dat." The Doctor said, trying to be hip. Me and Rose cringed in unison. "But I've got a little idea about that..."

* * *

"You have got to be kidding." I exclaimed an hour later, looking up at the huge, bottle green steam train.

"Ha ha!" The Doctor cried, leaping up into the driver's footplate and examining the controls. "Fantastic! Look at the attention to detail!"

We were in a subway station - South Quay, a two minute walk from the Principal Buildings. It looked exactly like the one we'd seen on the cam footage, though it wasn't actually the same station. It looked identical though - grey, aside from an eye-catching yellow safety line by the platform. It smelled faintly of bleach, and the floor was a little slippery to walk on. There were adverts on the walls. Adverts advertising space fuel. Hypo-meat burgers. Grav-Bikes. It's little details like this which made me remember just how far I was from home. I felt strangely alone in those moments.

The steam train, however, might have been from 1920's Earth. It was a huge great beast, with monster sizes green wheels, and a long green boiler which radiated heat. Attached to the back was a green tender where the coal was stored. There were no coaches. The coaches had been disconnected, and the whole subway system closed down. That was evidence of how much the Mayor trusted the Doctor with this. I only hoped that trust wouldn't be misplaced.

"Course, it ain't really a steam engine," the Doctor explained, "runs on sugar, but-"

"-Excuse me?" Rose interrupted. "On sugar?"

"Yep." the Doctor said flippantly. "Sugar. The design's just for show. Retro, innit? People like a retro lookin' train. Get up 'ere you two."

Me and Rose stepped up onto the driver's footplate, with a hand up from the Doctor. In the cab were two things; the sonic spear, it's blue lights pulsing on and off, and secondly a brown sack of Dimension Bombs. I examined the controls. I didn't know much (anything) about steam trains other than that they used coal. But I guessed that the controls I was looking at now were also retro. There was a dummy firebox, and the coal in the tender was all one solid mass of plastic, made to look like hundreds of blocks of coal. But the large, stiff looking levers and the twisty-things and the dials looked like they belonged on a steam locomotive as opposed to an advanced sugar powered engine.

"Get comfy," the Doctor told us. "If we're lucky, the sonic'll pick up the Whispering pretty soon. If we ain't lucky, if we don't find nothing, then the loop round the whole city'll take all night. Migh' be a late one."

"Does this thing run quietly?" I asked.

The Doctor shrugged and pulled a wire that hung overhead in the cabin. An ear-splitting wail erupted from the engine. Me and Rose clapped out ears.

"Choo-choo," the Doctor said, grinning. "Nah. Get ready for a lotta noise."

So off we set - into the dank, unlit tunnels below the city, The locomotive operated very much like an old steam one - harmless vapour rose from the funnel, and it made all the appropriate noises. But thankfully, there was no fire to light, nor any coal to shovel. And, unlike the old steam trains, there was no nice country view to watch as we travelled. Only blackened, filthy walls which enclosed us underground as we trundled along the line, our speed somewhere less than sixty miles per hour. Not very impressive.

I said as much to the Doctor. "Ach, it's sugar power for ya," he replied, "neat idea, but it ain't got much of a kick. Green, but not very mean."

"Fair enough." I replied, glancing at the sonic spear, which was propped upright against the cabin wall, scanning the area around us for any strange energies. It's weird...although the Doctor had all but admitted this was a bit of a fools' errand, that it could very easily not be down here at all, there was no real doubt in my mind that we'd find it. I could tell the Doctor and Rose were thinking the same...any moment now...

In fact, it took four hours.

We were still chugging down the line, me and Rose half-asleep, when the sonic spear gave a frightening, ear-splitting whine.

"Chuggin' heck!" I cried, clapping my hands to my ears. Rose did the same.

"Blimey," the Doctor exclaimed grabbing the spear and somehow quietening it down. He started talking sternly to it (of course). "Now I know ya excited, Mr. Big Sonic. But don't deafen me, eh? I couldn't hack being deaf, me. I like the sound o' me own voice too much."

"Never," remarked Rose, "has a truer word been spoken."

The Doctor ignored her and brought the train to a screeching, stomach lurching halt. I heard a hideous scraping noise below us as the stationary wheels grinded along the lines. I could smell burning as the friction shot up sparks. The Doctor waited until the train had slowed right down, and then got off. Me and Rose, being sensible, waited until the train had actually stopped before jumping off ourselves.

We helped the Doctor up from the floor and he dusted himself off. He held the spear out in front of him, his face screwed up with concern.

"Ay up," he remarked as it gave another (quieter) whine. "Weird reading a-this way!"

Without waiting for us, he set off at a quick pace down the track, the way we'd just come on the train. I looked around and shivered. We were stood in the tunnel, a black cavern with a curved ceiling, and two tracks, one for each direction. I thanked my lucky stars that the Mayor had agreed to close the network - the Doctor would no doubt have come down here regardless.

But this was _creepy_ down here, and not only because of what we thought (knew) lurked down here. Where we were standing, it wasn't for the public. It was meant to be seen, seen through train windows, but never accessed. Not by us. It had a horrible, forgotten feel to it. We all had headlamps, and I turned mine on now. We hadn't needed them inside the lit footplate of the engine.

Me and Rose jogged on after the Doctor. He didn't wait up. "Come on slowcoaches!" He called back without looking around.

"Where are we even going?" Rose asked. "There's nothing down here. Just the tunnel. And we've already _come_ this way."

"Stop ya whining, troopers!" The Doctor called back. "Come on, let's sing. Keep the morale up. _Everywhere we go!"_

"Everywhere we go." Me and Rose repeated without enthusiasm.

 _"People always ask us!"_

"People always ask us." We echoed, speaking not singing.

 _"Who we are!"_

"Who we are."

 _"Where we come from."_

"Where we come from them."

 _So we tell them!"_

"So we tell them."

"Keep ya're big ugly nose out of our business!" The Doctor finished. "Now enough o' that rubbish. Look what _I've_ found!"

We looked. My mouth dropped open; there, situated in the dark stone wall of the tunnel, was a small iron door. It was so small that it might have been built for a child. And clearly locked. A heavy padlock hung on the latch. But of course that meant nothing for the Doctor. He zapped the padlock with the sonic spear and it popped open at once. I pulled it off the handle and let it drop to the floor, making sure I didn't leave it on the railway track itself - I'd hate to be responsible for a derailing whenever the trains got up and running again.

The Doctor wrestled the door open, and as he did I was hit quite suddenly by the most ghastly smell, a foul air of such a putrid, rotten nature that my stomach turned the second I took a breath of it. I clapped my hands to my mouth, but it was too late. Staggering away from the open door, I knelt down and succumbed to a violent retching attack. Doubtless, I'd have been violently sick if I'd eaten in the past few hours. But I hadn't. I took several deep, shuddering breaths and managed to regain my composure. That smell!

"Nice," the Doctor remarked, "real nice."

"What is that?" I moaned. "I've never smelled anything like it!"

"It smelt like...is it..." Rose stared at the Doctor.

"Happen it is," the Doctor nodded grimly, "yeah."

"What?" I exclaimed.

The Doctor shrugged. "Puke. Lots and lots of puke. Gallons of it."

At this point, my retching fit returned. If they were right (and of course they were; I could recognize it for myself now) then through that little doorway had to be a bloody lake of the stuff! I laid down on the dusty floor panting. "That's disgusting."

"Understatement much." Rose gasped, clutching her nose. "What is it? I mean...why does it smell like that? It can't really be puke, surely?"

"I gotta hunch." The Doctor replied. "It ain't one of me nicer hunches. In fact, I don't like it at all."

"Well?" I gasped, rubbing my watering eyes.

"Look what's in 'ere," the Doctor told me. I rose unsteadily to my feet and staggered over, my hand clamped firmly over my nose as I breathed through my mouth. Through the doorway was a set of uneven stone steps, leading down into the blackness; our headlights didn't reach the bottom. On both sides of the staircase was a iron handrail.

"Where does that go?" Rose demanded.

"Dunno," the Doctor replied, "wanna find out?"

"Tell us your hunch before we agree to anything." I said at once.

"Well...okay. I reckon that down there is some sorta...I dunno...could be access to the sewers, which might go some way to explaining the smell. Ha. Wouldn't that be grand, if it was just a sewer. Better than the alternative."

"Which would be?"

"That this leads to some sorta old service tunnel, maybe. Or a store room. Some enclosed space anyway. Perfect place, in short, to build a nest."

Me and Rose exchanged a horrified glance. "A nest?" I repeated, my mouth dry. I recalled with horror how I'd once found it hiding in my locker at work - _nesting_ , as the Doctor put it back then.

"Well sure. Like insects build nests with old paper an' stuff, mixed with saliva. I reckon it's the same principle but - judging by the smell - on rather a larger scale. It builds nests."

"So what your saying," Rose said, "is that down there we'll either find a sewer...or a monster sized insects' nest."

The Doctor shook his head. "It ain't a sewer girls. That were me being 'opeful. Ha. Hopeful about finding a sewer. Sums this day up. But nah...there are...blimey, 'ow to put this...er...key smells missin' if ya get what I mean."

We agreed that we did.

"So I think," the Doctor continued, "I think probably we've found our monster. Shall we go say hi to it?"

For the life of me, I'll never understand why I answered "yes" to that question.

* * *

 ** _The Doctor's Diary, Entry 1963 Part 3_**

* * *

 _Commandeered a train! That were good fun actually. We had a nice little drive around for a few hours, but then finally I got a blip on the big sonic (I was partial to "sonic spear" at first, but I think big sonic sounds better now) and we came upon this weird little door in the tunnel wall._

 _Got a real shock opening it though. Blimey what a stench! Horrible. But I knew at once that we'd found the right place. A certain someone was very reluctant to come down there with me. But eventually she agreed to. Good on her! Like I say - that's why I like her so much. That's why I'm glad I asked her along. Most people would run screaming from the tunnels, right? Not her. Nah._

 _So down we went._

 _Down into the dark..._


	9. The First Adventure IV

It was dark down there. Very dark. And the walls were... _juicy_. Organic. As I looked around me, trying hard not to retch again, I saw solid, gooey filth attached to the walls, dripping from the ceiling...it was an orange-brown colour in the torchlight. On closer inspection (as close as my stomach could tolerate) I saw that it was made from old wood, paper and garbage moulded together with the digestive juices of the horror that existed down here, that lived in here. The stench was beyond anything I could imagine, and seemed to get worse the further down that staircase we went. But still, we continued on downwards.

Into the layer of the Whispering...

* * *

 ** _The First Adventure Part 4_**

* * *

"I can't breathe..." I gasped, my hand clamped firmly over my nose. Even drawing breath from my mouth seemed to let a small amount of the smell in. It wasn't, I realized, just a smell - it was a _taste_! In the air hung a hideous, sour tang, a taste that fitted the smell quite perfectly.

The Doctor had noticed it too. "It's this," he said, slapping the sickening substance on the wall. It squelched under his hand. "Particles o' this stuff, breaking off. We're inhaling it."

"Is it poison?" I demanded nervously, trying not to breathe.

"Who knows?" He replied candidly.

There was no helping it at this point. I was about to make my apologies and go, head back up the staircase back into the tunnel, and move as far away from the little door and the smell as I could. But as I turned, we heard something. I froze. We all did, Rose behind me on the stairs and the Doctor ahead. It was a blood-curdling noise, and one I'd heard before.

It was scuttling. The sound of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of pointy insects' feet moving across the floor. It was coming from below us, at the bottom of the stairs. It was as if some giant was tapping his fingernails against a wooden table, all at different times. The Doctor's headlamp illuminated what lay below the staircase. Up ahead was a shape. An incomprehensible, shapeless shifting mass in the darkness. I squinted, trying to see through the gloom, to get a good look at the Whispering in it's natural form. But as soon as my eyes _nearly_ adjusted to the dark, and allowed me to _nearly_ see the creature below, I was hit by a thundering, crushing headache. I squealed in agony and clutched my head tight, screwing my eyes shut.

"No!" The Doctor said. "Don't look at it! It'll burn out ya mind. Yer brain can't understand it!"

"Kill it!" I screamed at him. "Throw the Dimension Trap!"

He was about to. But then the lights came on.

"Shut yer eyes!" The Doctor screamed, and me and Rose tightly clamped out eyes shut. Before I did, however, I got a proper glimpse of my surroundings for the first time. We were very near the bottom of the staircase, nearer than I'd thought we were. We were in some sort of underground storage room. Or rather, that's what it had been. The lights revealed shelves, pipes and concrete, all the stuff you'd expect to find in a underground storeroom (presumably it was once, I reasoned, a secret location for valuable Government documents and items). Only now, half the walls were smothered in vomit-and-wood paste, while the floor of the room was a wet soggy river of nest. I again nearly saw the Whispering; the architect of this horror, the creature which darn near killed me a long time ago, the monster which ripped people to shreds. And again, as I nearly saw it, my head exploded in pain.

"Stay 'ere," the Doctor told me and Rose sternly, and I guessed that he, unlike us, had a brain powerful enough to tolerate the image of something so utterly alien, so utterly unknown, so utterly different from anything and everything in our dimension. I heard his footsteps descend the final few steps, followed by a _squelch_ as his feet hit the floor of the sodden chamber. He was standing in the creatures vomit.

"'Allo." The Doctor said solemnly. "Am I addressing the Whisperin'? I think I am."

"Time Lord," came a familiar, harsh voice. "It has been too long...I always wondered when you'd find me again. I thought you would."

"Do me a favour," the Doctor replied, "me mates can't look at you, and you know it. Put your face on."

There was a cracking, splintering noise, and the Doctor tapped me lightly on the shoulder. "Open yer eyes, and come down."

I did both. I winced as I stepped down into the chamber, my own feet now squelching in the damp filth of the Whispering's nest. The chamber was small. The size, I think, of a medium sized bedroom. It's size, in my opinion, gave away just how important a location it was. There was very little room for storage, and thus I guessed that highly valuable things were stored here at one point. No more. Now it was home to a monster.

A monster which looked like a little boy. The boy was grinning at me. As I saw the brown coat and the flatcap again, I remembered all over again the way security Paul and my poor friend Steph were murdered - Paul slammed into a solid wall and shattered, Steph disintegrated into dust, and then me stabbed, my back broken, my insides ruptured and ruined...how close I came to death as a result of this... this _thing_ , which lived down here in a pool of it's own bodily fluids.

"Lynshey!" It lisped, it's little face a picture of glee. "Long time no shee! Wot wot?" The boy giggled and performed a perfectly executed cartwheel. I noticed that none of the vomit was on the boy. His clothes and skin were utterly clean, despite the fact he was standing in it, had just rolled around in it.

"Leave her alone." Rose told it firmly. Evidently she'd seen the look on my face, seen how pale I'd gone. The smell, I noticed, was more tolerable now. No - simply we'd gotten used to it. As that thought popped into my head, I again felt ill.

The Whispering noticed. "Let me help." It said, grinning maliciously. It lifted an arm, and for one heart-stopping moment, I was sure that it was going to disintegrate me like it had disintegrated Steph. But it didn't. Instead, my left arm, quite independent of me, lifted. I watched in horror as my hand unfurled and shot to my face. My finger and thumb pinched my nose tight shut. Though I could still breathe from my mouth, I began to panic. What if it made me cover that too?

"I said leave her!" Rose screamed, splashing in between me and the creature.

"No." It said simply, shaking it's head so vigorously that it's eyes rolled in it's sockets. In _different directions,_ as though it was some old dolly. In a way it was; it was a puppet, a loose fitting costume. The movements were clumsy, and the way it stood (stiff, stooped and awkwardly) showed how the creature beneath simply wasn't used to the shape of a person.

"No," it repeated, turning to the Doctor, "I'll take her! I'll take her for my own! My ally, my shervant, my protector. What shay you, Time Lord?"

"Don't you dare," the Doctor hissed, reaching to his pocket. "I mean it! You harm her in any way, I'll put you back in here, where you belong. And this time I'll finish ya off. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. An' I got enough shame in me to last a lifetime. I ain't gonna let something like _you_ add to it. You understand me?"

The Whispering threw back it's head and squealed with laughter. "Or jusht leave. Leave now, with your friend shafe. Which will it be?"

The Doctor removed his hand from the pocket. "Okay," he lied, showing the Whispering his empty hands, "release her nose, and we'll talk." I knew him well enough to know he was pretending to co-operate - he had a plan. I was sure of it...

I felt my hand fly from my nose. I took a deep breath in relief - and proceeded straight away to have another fit of dry heaving, as I sucked in a huge lungful of the disgusting air.

But we'd been tricked.

At once, the lights went out again with a pop. Me, the Doctor and Rose cried out in alarm as the light diminished, only the narrow cones of our headlamps remaining.

The Whispering spoke again, but not in the lisping child's voice - in a harsh, cold growl. "Farewell... _scum_."

It meant to kill us, of course. I heard the cracking, splintering noise again, followed by the pitter-patter of multiple feet scuttling around. But suddenly there was a hiss and an otherworldly scream. I smelled smoke - acrid, vomit-filled smoke. I realized with a cry of triumph that the Doctor had waited until this very moment and thrown something at the nest - some sort of chemical which was stripping it down, reacting with it and melting it. I felt the goo beneath my feet soften to total liquid. Unfortunately, that which was stuck to the ceiling also came down, splattering us all with liquid nest.

I then heard a scuffle. I looked around, and in my torchlight I could see the Doctor, Dimension Trap in hand, wrestling with...something, trying to hurl the little metal ball at it, to finish this second encounter and hopefully this time rid the universe of this murderous entity forever...

Except now a hand (no, a _pincer_ ) shot out from the darkness, knocking me to the floor and scrabbling to pick me up. I screamed so loud that my eardrums ached in protest - it was like a giant crabs pincer, the size of a Labrador, trying to seize me. But then Rose helped me away from it. I pulled away gratefully, my heart racing, my stomach churning with the combined terror and vileness of the place.

And then it got Rose.

She screamed as the claw turned it's attention from me and grabbed her around the mid-section. I cried out in horror as it pulled her backwards, towards the creature itself. I grappled for her hand, momentarily grabbing her before she was pulled away. But the Whispering was by far too strong.

"Doctor!" I cried, "It's got her! It's got Rose!"

"Doctor!" Rose screamed, sobbing in pain as the claw dug into her flesh. The Doctor, quick as lightning, withdrew the sonic spear from his pocket (Tardis pocket) and turned the lights back on. The organic parts of the room, the walls of the nest, were melting away quickly, destroyed by whatever substance the Doctor had used on them (which I saw now to be a simply insecticide). In the middle of the room was an electric blue portal, through which the claw extended. The rest of the Whispering had gone through already. Rose was still held firmly by it, but she wasn't screaming any more. Nor did she look scared.

I glanced at the Doctor who had gone pale. He was shaking with rage. "You let her go," he said desparatley, pointing the sonic spear uselessly at it, "let her go, an' I'll never follow ya. You let her be! You hear me?"

But Rose replied in a voice that wasn't her own. "I am the ally. I am the servant. I am the protector." She smiled a ghastly smile, her eyes glossy and far away.

"No!" Me and the Doctor yelled - too late - Rose was pulled through, and the portal closed with an electrical fizzing...

They were gone.

* * *

Back in the Mayor's office the next day, the Doctor and Clifford were shouting at one another.

The journey back from the underground chamber passed in a daze of panic, anger and shock at just having lost Rose in such a sudden and indeed avoidable manner. The Doctor spoke not at all, and drove the train back at a frightening speed.

"I need men," the Doctor bellowed, towering over the Mayor, "I've saved ya bloody cess-pit town, you can darn well 'elp me out!"

"I think not," Clifford retorted, his own voice not a bit as intimidating, "I saved you once, you saved me once. I owe you nothing, though I'm forever grateful! We're even, man! I'm not risking any of my people on this!"

The Doctor was so angry that he was hyperventilating. For my own part, I was completely shocked. I'd never seen him like this, and I'd never seen him request anybody's help. Certainly not that of the armed forces, which he was doing now; trying to persuade the Mayor to spare him a group of elite soldiers, to chase down the monster and locate Rose.

But Mayor Clifford wouldn't have it. "I'm sorry," he said, quieter now, "I am, Doctor. I'm sorry. But too many of people have died because of this creature. Don't you understand that? I'm not having it anymore. Not one more death, not one more citizen. Not for this monster."

I gently took the Doctor's arm. "C'mon, Doctor," I said gently, "come on. He ain't a bad man and you know it. He's looking out for his people."

"At the cost of her life," the Doctor snapped, shaking me off and walking swiftly from the room, not a word of goodbye to Nervous Cliff. I glanced at the Mayor once more, and half-smiled. "Sorry."

The Mayor shrugged. "You understand, don't you?"

"And so does he. Deep down. Once he's calmed down, he'll see it from your point of view."

"I hope so," Clifford nodded. He frowned. "What are you gonna do? You two?"

"Well," I said slowly, "I'm guessing he's gone back t' the Tardis. And then I guess we...well, we..."

I lapsed into silence. "Your going after it, aren't you?" The Mayor said.

I nodded. "We have to. We have to save Rose. Whatever it takes."

And, shaking his hand, I took my leave also. To my surprise, the Doctor had waited for me outside in the garden. He was standing by one of the exotic plants.

"You ready for this?" He barked as I approached.

I nodded. "Always. Let's do it."

The Doctor nodded grimly. "Let's go. We'll be able to track where it went in the Tardis. We find it. We get her back."

I nodded again. In other words...the chase was on.

* * *

 ** _The Doctor's Diary, Entry 1963 Part 4_**

* * *

 _That'll stay with me for a long time, what we found down there. Disgusting. Hideous. Out of this world._

 _But essentially, it's some form of insect-like thing with shape-shifting abilities. I think. I could look at it without my brain imploding, but I still couldn't really make out what it was meant to be. Not until it disguised itself as a little boy._

 _But would bug spray work on it? I thought it was worth a try, and it worked wonders on the nest, if not the creature itself. With it distracted by the destruction of it's nest, I tried to use the Dimension Trap. But it didn't work that way, of course. When does it? With it's nest wrecked, it quite simply teleported away. That's the kind of creature it is. It had no personal vendetta against Ravrock, no personal reason at all to stay there and kill it's citizens...it's only interest is food, and the "sport" of hunting. But it doesn't care who it kills or where it kills. Just wherever there's meat. Any meat, anywhere._

 _But we've gotta finish what we started. It doesn't belong in this universe, and it could do untold damage if I just let it go. I can't do that. So we're going after it. I don't know where that will take us. In times gone by, removing inter-dimensional predators would have been the job of the Time Lords. Only they're all but dead, and I'm the last Time Lord. So it's my job._

 _Wish us luck._


	10. INTERVAL - Lynsey At Fourteen: Oddbob

The Whispering, in fact, wasn't the first alien I'd met. Heck, the whole world had met aliens before that. The years between 2005 to...well I guess the last major incident was 2009(ish) unless you count that weird stuff with the graves back in '14. But yeah, the period between '05 to '09 were hectic; for a time it seemed as though the aliens would never stop coming.

Until they did; this time period (shall we call it the "time of the aliens") ended abruptly and violently, culminating in the Dalek's invasion of Earth. Oh, a few things popped up after that, just like a few things popped up now and again before 2005. But certainly, these five years (yes, five; 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, don't contradict me) were truly out of control.

And do you what happened after the last major incursion?

We all forgot. I kid you not, we just forgot. We knew a lot and we forgot. Like my rhyming skills?

Some examples - a spaceship crashing into Big Ben, the Christmas where people stood on the roofs, the battle of Canary Wharf, the Christmas Star which zapped people (ho, ho, ho) and of course, the aforementioned Dalek attack...

And when it's over, everyone forgets...why? Because we have to, I think. Because the alternative would each night be staring up at the night sky with sheer terror...I don't know. Your asking the wrong person, and I can't explain it. All I can say for sure is that we do forget. Oh, not all of us. And not totally. It's always there, at the back of our minds. Not the details; for example, who among us would know a Dalek when we saw it in 2020? But the fear. We remember that.

Maybe that's why we have nightmares. Maybe that's why we wake up feeling unwell and clammy, when we almost remember the time of the aliens, and the people we lost as a result of it.

All I know for sure is this; since meeting the Doctor, it's all come back to me. All of it. Including what happened to my old bunking-buddy Nick...

* * *

 ** _2009, Lynsey Perron at fourteen_**

* * *

So I received my "education", not that I really learned a thing, at Park Vale Comprehensive School in Ealing. Well, I uh...I received _some_ of my "education" at Park Vale, I should say...I _might_ have been moved there from the Coal Hill School in Shoreditch, having been expelled...and in turn, I _might_ have been at Coal Hill only after having been expelled from Deffry Vale High School.

And yeah... _maybe_ I was expelled from Park Vale about a month after these events. _Maybe_ I ended up in borstal. I cannot confirm or deny these rumours, but I must stress that they are _only_ rumours...so, um...

Anyway, down to business; I want to tell you a story of the first time I met an alien face to face. An encounter I'd almost completely forgotten until meeting the Doctor, but which I now remember as though it was only yesterday. And actually, you might be surprised to know that this story has a happy ending. But it was very traumatizing at the time. None of us ever expected to see Nick again. Nor any of the other kids who went missing.

It started one random morning back in '09. Think it was still Autumn, to be honest. That September, I'd joined the school with another new girl; a lanky Indian bird with a pretty, clever face and a northern accent.

"Rani Chandra," the girl said, offering me my hand. Inwardly, I scoffed. Upper-class so and so...

But I'm not rude for the sake of it, whatever else my flaws are. I accepted her hand. "Awright?" I muttered. "Lynsey. Good to meet ya."

We were sat together in the head of year's office, waiting for a pep talk on our new school, the rules and expectations, and what we could and couldn't do there. "So what brings ya here?" I asked Rani.

Rani squirmed in embarrassment. "Actually...my dad is the new headteacher. We moved here recently."

"Awch," I laughed, "that's a tough one, sis."

"Tell me about it," Rani grinned, "yourself?"

"Eh?"

"Why'd you come here?"

"Expelled." I said proudly.

Rani's eyes widened. "Wow! For doing what?"

I shrugged. "This and that. I don't give a toss about me education, Rana."

"Rani." She corrected me.

"Sure, sure. Nah, it's all pointless to me. I don't need to learn English, coz I can already speak it. And as for maths, that became a pointless subject once they'd invented the calculator. You agree?"

"Um..." Rani said, "well, I...I kind of have to disagree, to be fair. I want to go into journalism when I'm older, and I do kinda need to do well."

"Suit yourself," I said. I could tell that being new at the same time was the only thing me and Rani had in common. She was a goody-two-shoes kinda girl through and through. I could tell at once we wouldn't ever be friends. Although my adult self would become close friends with poor, dead Steph, who was a goody-two-shoes through and through, my stupid arrogant kid self had no time for such people. But still, me and her chatted a little longer that morning, until the head of year (a large, pouchy man named Mr. Walt) finally turned up to give us a stern talking to about life at Park Vale. After that, we went our separate ways. We hadn't been assigned any of the same classes.

I said goodbye to Rani outside the office, as we walked off in different directions. I saw her often in the corridors after that, and I'd always raise my eyebrows or nod at her by way of greeting, receiving a smile in return. But overtime, as my reputation for a serious troublemaker grew, her smiles would become more and more reluctant. I suppose I didn't blame her; daughter of the head-teacher, and straight A student to boot. It was no good for her to be associated with someone like me. I understood that. I didn't mind. She had her friends; a funny kid called Clyde who's jokes often made me laugh, and a nervous ultra-swot called Luke, who I had nothing at all to do with.

That was her main friendship group. Odd little gang, really. Always acting like they were somehow different to everyone else, that they knew something we didn't...but like I said, nothing to do with me. I had my own set of friends. They were as follows;

 ** _1)_** Jess Bowman; once caught snorting drugs behind the P.E. changing rooms, pregnant at fifteen.

 ** _2)_** Lauren Howle; a beautiful red-haired girl who had been excluded seven times for getting into fights. She had severe anger problems.

 ** _3)_** Aaron Bollinger; fat, fat, fat. Always late. Always in trouble. He was bullied for his weight, and he in turn bullied a lot of other people to make himself feel better. Looking back, he's the only one of my friends I'm ashamed of now, as an adult. The others, for all their faults, were not bad people back then. Aaron was, although I suppose to an extent he was made that way by the people who bullied him for his size.

 ** _4)_ **Nick Turner; great guy. Your go-to guy for cigarettes and booze. His folks ran a pub, and he could smuggle into school pretty much anything he wanted. For the three months I spent at Park Vale, before Mr. Chandra finally gave up and sent me away, Nick was my closest friend. I stayed in touch with him until the age of twenty, when I finally decided to turn my back on that lifestyle. I just said that Aaron was the only bad kid back then, and that was true. Back then, Nick was actually quite a good guy. A rule breaker for sure, but not a bully, and not someone who would hurt anybody else (unless you count giving them booze and cigs). But by the time we were both twenty, he wasn't a good guy. He was a violent dealer and a loan shark, a terrible human being through and through. But he wasn't like that as a kid. I know that for a fact, because now I can remember _exactly_ when he changed. And what changed him.

I want to say this now, before I tell the story; Nick was _not_ my friend by the time we lost contact. He was my dealer. That's the only reason I stayed in contact with him for so long. I couldn't be friends with someone like that. But I don't want to remember Nick as a violent dealer, as an armed robber and a scumbag who ruined lives. I want to remember him as the cheeky, funny kid who brought rum and coke into school, and who once stuck his foot through a wall as a dare. Let that be how Nick Turner is remembered; in 2018, when he and I were aged twenty-three (and out of contact entirely) Nick Turner was murdered by a rival gang. He was drowned; put in a cement bath and thrown in the River Thames as an example of what happens to whoever messes with whichever gang was responsible.

But what made him who he was? What killed the cheeky-chappie and replaced him with a monster? I think I know. In fact, I'm sure of it. He was never the same after what happened.

It was a clown. Oddbob the clown, with his rainbow suit and his white pancake face. He took Nick, and a lot of other kids along with him.

* * *

We were sat on a park bench. Which park and which bench are irrelevant. All you need to know is that we shouldn't have been there. We were supposed, of course, to be in school. But...naaaah. Neither of us could be bothered that day (which was true of plenty of days over my brief stint at Park Vale) and as such we skipped after registration and headed down to the park to light up. It was usually just me and Nick. Sometimes the others would come, with the exception of Lauren who never did. She was the only one of our group who actually did hold some interest in her future prospects and education. Though she was in trouble right along with us plenty enough, she did at least turn up for exams and lessons on a regular basis.

I raised the cig to my lips and took a long, deep breath, the rich rancid flavour flooding my mouth and throat, making me cough. As we sat there on our phones, neither of us spoke. I remember wondering when, if at all, a teacher or a cop would come by and escort us back to school; we were, after all, still in our uniforms.

Instead, someone else came along. A clown. Nick noticed him first. He was across the playing field we were facing, talking to a bunch of little kids and their parents. He seemed to be offering them something. From the distance, he looked funny; he wore a baggy suit of bright colours (yellow, red and blue) and his face was decorated white with greasepaint, with a painted red smile on his mouth. His hair stuck up in three red tufts - one the top of his head, and two sticking out at the sides, and he had a round red ball nose stuck on.

"Ain't a circus on, is there?" I asked. Nick only shrugged.

"Ah man, he's coming over," Nick grunted, "we'll look stupid talking to _that_."

But there was no helping it - the clown walked away from the crowd looking slightly forlorn; evidently he had not been able to give away whatever he was clearly advertising. But he spied us and a real grin exploded across his face, under the big goofy grin which was painted on. He came bounding over, and quickly (looking back, impossibly quickly) he was standing there, right in front of our bench.

"Weeeeeell, hello friends," he exclaimed, throwing his arms wide. I shuddered when I caught sight of his teeth. They were yellow-brown, uneven and horribly sharp. His face, though mainly white (aside from the big smile) was decorated with black lining, and two big black eyebrows, with decorative dashes of black over his eyes as well. On his hands were two white gloves, his feet dressed in big floppy yellow shoes.

"Awright mate?" I laughed, looking him up and down, wondering why I suddenly felt scared.

"Ticketsssss," he drawled in an American accent, "Spellman's Magical Museum of the Circus! Come visit! Come laugh! Come play! How 'bout it?"

He offered us two tickets. And to cut a long story short, we each took one. Not coz we wanted to go, because we didn't. Circus museum? Forget it. As soon as someone says "museum" to me, I switch off. I'm still like that today, I regret to admit. But to be polite (or actually, just to get rid of the clown) we took his tickets. With a final bow and a flurry of the arms, the clown left.

On our way back to school (with a police escort, no less) we dumped the tickets in a nearby bin.

* * *

Over the next week, two things happened. Firstly, the very next day, Nick vanished without a trace. Taken from his bed. Overnight. He wasn't the first, he wasn't the last. It had been happening a lot in Ealing. Secondly, that clown, with it's stripy rainbow suit and it's terrible teeth, followed me wherever I went. I'd look behind me, and catch a glimpse of rainbow nearby - in a bush, on a bus, in a nearby window. When I lay in bed at night, sweating and jumping at every noise, I'd hear a cooing laughter coming from somewhere outside. I'd look out the window, and sometimes (but not every time) the clown would be there, standing in the street.

My upbringing was...bad. Absent dad, disgusting little flat with a druggie mum. But she was all I had. So I turned to her one morning, I tried to explain what was happening.

"Ach," she spat, slapping me hard across the head, "you've been on the bloody weed again, ain't ya? Stupid lil' cow. Stuff off. Get to bloody school, I ain't got the time for this."

And with a bruised head and tears in my eyes, off I went. On the way there, the clown followed me. Nobody else saw him. Nobody else cared. It was that day when I realized that the clown couldn't possibly be human. He appeared in such random places, with such frightening suddenness. He was, I realized probably who'd been taking the kids, heck who would probably take _me_ any day now. I was so scared! I wondered if he'd taken Nick too - probably. Were they dead? Did he, perhaps, eat them? Or turn them into one of the many red balloons he sometimes held when he appeared? What would happen to me? In bed that night, I cried my eyes out. I didn't want to be turned into a balloon! I cried so hard that it woke up mum. She came in, hugged me tightly and sat with me 'til I slept. In the morning, she'd been having severe withdrawal symptoms. She hadn't had a drink in hours. But that evening, she was well tanked up on value supermarket Vodka and coke. That evening, she was content, and loving. That's what I had to deal with as a kid.

I sometimes wonder what became of my mum. There's another story to tell about the last time I saw her. The day I snapped and walked out, leaving her cowering on the bathroom floor with a broken arm and shards of whiskey bottle in her leg. But it's another story, for another time.

That night, I told her again about the monster clown, who had taken Nick and several other kids, and who would soon be coming to take me away...

She kissed me again. "Naw, love," she said, "it ain't no monster. There's some sort of weirdo out there. 'Til he's caught, ya don't have to go anywhere near school."

So I didn't. The next day, I stayed home, and I saw nothing of the clown.

The day after that, everyone came home!

All the missing kids; Nick Turner, David Finn and Tony Warner, among with a handful of others. All back! Just like that! With no memory of what had happened.

And nobody ever saw that clown again. Only now, looking back on these events which I'd almost forgotten, do I realize how very lucky I was. Whatever stopped that clown happened just in time. Another day, another two, I too might have been taken.

 ** _But_**

Nick Turner was dead. Inside. Oh, he was alive and well physically. But all that...all that cheek, all that wide boy charm was gone. In it's place was a dark, brooding creature, a violent monster with a temper more explosive than Lauren Howle's, and no sense of when to back off, or what "going too far" amounted to. Whatever had happened to him, wherever he'd gone, had changed him somehow. For the rest of the time I knew him, he scared me. He scared me so much. He beat up Jess Bowman once! Actually beat her up! For no obvious reason. Part of me was glad, when I got expelled from Park Vale for setting fire to my exam paper; I was glad to be away from Nick.

Of course, he's dead now. And do you know what, I'm glad he's dead. That horrible, vile creature who robbed from old people, savagely assaulted people whom he'd lent money to, who provided people with noxious substances with which they killed themselves...he was dead, and good riddance to bad rubbish.

But still, I wept that day, when I heard the news. Because that _hadn't_ been Nick Turner. Nick Turner had died in 2009, murdered by a monster dressed as a clown. He'd been hollowed out, mutated and crushed, until nothing remained of who he had been. Same memories, same body...but _not_ the same person. I cried that day for the real Nick, who I was friends with for only a very short time, but who left a lasting impression on me.

That day, I remembered the clown for the first time in a long time. As I did, I suddenly found myself remembering everything else that had happened around that time...just before that, I think had been the Dalek invasion. Just after that...might it have been the Titanic incident? I don't know; I think time became so utterly distorted throughout that period, that it becomes impossible to really document these events, and the order in which they happened. And indeed, if they really happened at all.

But anyway, the next day...I forgot. I remembered Nick, I remembered that he died...but the time of the aliens once again slipped my mind. Just like that...

And I didn't believe in aliens.

Until I met the Doctor. And now, I see things differently.

And we won't rest, neither of us, until we have Rose back. Safe, alive and free of the Whispering forever. We _will_ save her.

* * *

 ** _The Doctor's Diary, Entry 1964_**

* * *

 _So we've tracked it down again. The planet Kriakljjlefnflzijvlzwjitvalirjlc Apple 14. Or Kriak, as it's more commonly known. Only the natives of that world are able to pronounce it's full name. Literally, nobody else can. Not even a Time Lord._

 _But all ain't well down there now. The Whispering's there. Trouble is, it were jumping time tracks to get there. Though we're only a few hours behind it in the time vortex, we could land to discover it's been there for years. I dunno. I hope not. Blimey, I hope not. Countless dead if that's really the case. Countless dead._

 _I only hope I'm wrong, and we've arrived sooner than that. It's a level 2 planet. It's civilization is comparable to that of Medieval Earth. It doesn't know of aliens, and doubtless it will view the Whispering as some sort of supernatural creature. The place is a bit...I hate to say it, but...barbaric. I'm slightly worried that me and my chum might get hanged just for entertainment. I hope not. Any which way, we've got a duty to the people down there. We can't let this thing roam free, feeding on them._

 _So then, let's get to it._

* * *

 **END OF CHAPTER**

* * *

Author's Note: Just to clarify, Oddbob the clown is a character from series 2 of The Sarah Jane Adventures. He appeared in "The Day of the Clown", in my opinion one of the very best stories the show made. I was genuinely scared as a kid.


	11. The Second Adventure I

So until we get Rose back (and we _will_ get her back) it's just me and the Doc. Which is a bit weird, actually. Bit awkward. We're a motley crew, us three. But significantly, we work best as a three. As a two, it's a bit...well, tense. We like each other well enough, of course. He'd never have taken me if he didn't like me, and I'd never have come if I didn't like him (so I tell myself). But unlike Rosie T, who's got a naturally good affinity with the man, I struggle to think of what to say to him. What do you say to the person who's hundreds of years older than you, and about a million times as intelligent? What can you talk to such a guy about? Anything you tell him, he knows. Anywhere you tell him about, he's been twice already. Any question you ask, he can answer in the blink of an eye...

I suppose normally it might be easier. Under normal circumstances, he'd do most of the talking, and I'd sit there nodding my head. But now Rose is gone, he's become very quiet. Brooding. The journey from Ravrock to Kriak passed in a series of awkward silences and false smiles. We were both worried, we were both scared. Often, Rose would be the chipper optimist that kept us going, kept us from getting too anxious. Me, I'm more of the pessimist. I'm grumpy. I believe that the only way to avoid disappointment is to aim as low as you can throughout life. Rose was different. Is different! She's alive. She is. I know it. And she's coming home.

So we arrived on Kriak, the Doctor having managed to pinpoint it as the Whispering's next stop. To pass the silence, I asked him how he was tracking it. He only told me that I wouldn't understand, and lapsed back into silence. I mean, yeah...fair point, I wouldn't have a clue what he's on about. But since when has that stopped him?

* * *

 ** _The Second Adventure Part 1_**

* * *

"Cor blimey," the Doctor whistled, looking down at the huge manor house below us, in the valley.

I joined him. "Haunted?"

"Most certainly." The Doctor said brightly. "But look at it like this; there are tribes in these hills. Tribes with axes. Tribes with sacrificial slabs and face paint. Gimme a haunted house any day. Least there might be someone comparability civilized living there."

"You reckon they're in there?" I asked. "Rose and the Whispering?"

"Not necessarily. Maybe. Only one way to find out, ain't there?"

Without waiting for me, he set off at a quick pace down into the lush valley below us. We'd landed in the middle of a windswept green plateau full of hills. It was hot in the sun, but there was a cold bite in that wind. The grass was dewy, and a smell of rain hung in the air, despite a clear blue sky. The only sign of civilization, besides the big house, was a dirt road leading off into the distance, between two large mountains. I supposed that to follow it would bring you to some kind of settlement sooner or later. Stray off it, however, and you could get lost in these hills. You could wander for hours until the savages that the Doctor spoke about found you, and ate you for dinner. I wondered in that moment just how safe we were here, out in the open.

I jogged to catch up with the Doctor and asked him about that. He shrugged. "Actually," he said, "the tribes are generally pretty scared o' civilization. They don't go near the dirt track in daylight, an' you wouldn't find one brave enough to come within spotting distance o' that house."

"How much of that is true?" I demanded, knowing he was lying to reassure me.

"Some of it, Lyn. And yes, I am being generous with that estimate. Now come on. We'll be fine. How 'bout another song to keep us goin'?"

"Depends on the song." I replied.

"Well...haunted manor house, middle o' the mountains...can only be one song, right?"

"Oh no..." I muttered.

The Doctor lowered his voice to a deep, ominous pitch and began a chillingly accurate recital of the theme music of The Shining; _"bom-bom-bom-bom-bom-bom...bombom,"_ he sang slowly.

"Thank you," I said sharply, "that'll do."

"Suit yerself," he giggled, walking a few paces ahead of me. Ahead of us, perhaps a half-mile, the big old haunted castle stood tall, casting a huge shadow. _Inviting_ us towards itself. I dismissed the thought from my head. Despite it's imposing, unwelcoming stature, I was quite desperate to get to that house. I truly felt like we were being watched out here. Indeed, I thought, we probably were; whomever these tribes were, these were their hills. They surely knew them incredibly well, surely could hide themselves out here and lie in wait for prey...but how close? How close?

The house itself was a wooden structure. This was, after all, a planet straight out the Tudor times, or even earlier. The house, whilst large and rather majestic, was really rather slap-dash and rickety compared to 2020's Earth. Rough, uneven wooden panels made up the walls, while the decorative windows looked, even from this distance, very thin and flimsy. The roof was made of grey bricks. That stuck me as slightly unsafe. A heavy brick roof, sitting stop a house made of moss-eaten timber...but then I guessed (or rather, hoped) that perhaps the wood was just paneling as opposed to what actually kept the structure in place. Oh yeah. Surely (hopefully) there was more brickwork beneath the wood, holding it upright. I thought (hoped) so. I was going in that place! I've never much liked the idea of getting crushed.

There were three floors; ground, first, and a second one built into the roof. Perhaps four - there could be a basement, where they kept the wine and the mead and whatever other concoctions they drunk here. We were now quarter-mile at most from the house, walking in silence. From this distance, I could see candlelight flickering in the windows, could see a faint plume of smoke rising from an unnecessarily high chimney in the roof. There was a large, oak double-door at the front of the house. As we approached, the Doctor took me to one side for a moment.

"Aw, come on! Let's just go in! What about the tribes?"

"Jus' wanna give ya an advance warning, Lyn..." the Doctor said.

"About what?"

"Well...see how this planet is really very primitive?"

I shrugged. "I know. Kinda why I'm so eager to get indoors..."

"Yeah, but...well, look at it this way - you know how in the medieval times back on Earth, nobody really had showers or baths? Or deodorants? Or any kind of hygiene at all really?"

"Yeah..." I said slowly.

"Well, you'll find that 'ere is much the same, I'm afraid. So, ta cut a long story short; whomever's living in there is gonna stink. Stink like the Whispering's nest. Well, okay. Not as bad as that. But pretty bad. Ya nearly chucked up back in them tunnels. I don't want no repeat of that."

I stared at him. "Is that all? I thought you had something _urgent_ to tell me."

"I do."

"Which is what?" I demanded.

"Look behind you."

My throat tightened, and I looked over my shoulder, where the Doctor was also looking, his blue eyes filled with fear. Behind me a half-mile was a hill. And on top of that hill was a line of people, perhaps as many as twenty. Some on horseback. Most with helmets, and heavy furs and capes. Though I couldn't be sure from this distance, my heart lurched as I saw what I believed might be longbows in some of their hands. I couldn't tell if they were men or women. I guessed both.

I nodded and turned back to the Doctor. "If we run, will they chase us?"

"Shall we place a bet on it?" The Doctor asked sincerely.

"Nah, let's not." I looked around again. The figures were walking slowly down the hill. Towards us. Apart from two. Those two who remained up there were both carrying the objects that looked a lot like longbows. Even as I watched, I saw them both reach behind themselves...archers keep their arrows in pouches behind their backs, don't they?

Yep. Yep, they certainly do. And still, the tribe advanced on us. The first of them (those, of course, on horseback) were at the bottom of the hill. Nobody was running. Not yet. But as soon as we moved...

"We've gotta go," the Doctor muttered urgently. "You ready?"

"Yeah." I whispered.

He took my hand in his and with a thrill of adrenaline, we took off. We raced across the field towards the house, out feet slapping the damp grass below us. At once, we heard an ear splitting roar from behind us, and the clashing of steel on steel as they readied their axes and bladed. Horses whined, and the sound of running feet and galloping hooves filled our ears. I didn't dare look back. To look back was to slow down, and to slow down was to get caught.

The horseback tribes' people had halved the distance between us already. But we were close now...so close. We were going to make it! But then I heard a _wooshing_ sound, and the Doctor cried out in agony, collapsing to the ground. I stared in dismay; a long wooden stick was jutting out of his leg, with feathers on the end. One of the bowman had delivered a perfect shot. For they weren't aiming to kill. Not yet. They were aiming to cripple us, and drag us back to camp...

I threw myself to the floor beside him; good call. I heard another _woosh_ , and felt something fly through the air above my prone position. It flew over me. If I'd been standing, if I had left it even a second later to drop, I'd have been shot in the stomach. The drop made my old battle scars ache momentarily again, but that was the least of my problems. The horseback hunters were almost on top of us. I glanced around and slammed my fist onto the floor, shutting my eyes. We were about twenty feet from the house. Twenty bloody feet! So close!

But not close enough. I heard them jump from the horses. I looked up. One was a man, the other a woman. They were filthy. And yes, they stunk. They had face paint on their cheeks, red and green dashes that looked like cuts. Their hair (brown the man, blonde the woman) was greasy, matted and scraggy. The man had a fuzzy beard. The woman was snarling like an animal, revealing sharp yellow teeth. She held a spiky iron ball attached to a wooden pole; a mace. The man had a double-sided battleaxe.

They wore pieces of brown fur over what looked like leather, their clothes bound together with ropes. Their feet were dressed in heavy leather, while their trousers were sewn up loosely at the side, and made of strange brown fabric. On their wrists and shoulders was armour. Some hardened leather, some a crude sort of tin-like metal. The woman had several necklaces around her neck.

I looked at the Doctor, and he at me. He smiled sadly, his beautiful blue eyes etched with pain.

"I'm sorry." He whispered.

I shook my head. "Don't be. Not for a moment. Not for one moment."

We grinned, and took each other's hands. Above us, the brutes reached down with glove-wrapped hands...

* * *

 ** _The Doctor's Diary, Entry 1965 Part 1_**

* * *

 _The Tardis brought us down in some mountain range on Kriak. Not ideal. The plateau is where the barbarians live. Not, of course, that the towns (if you can call them that) were much better...but in town, at the worst we'd get hung. As opposed to cooked alive and tortured, which was what might have been in store for us if the tribes got at us._

 _But all was not lost! Below us in the valley was an old house. An occupied old house! Not ideal, of course. But whoever lived there, I reasoned, was probably rich. Probably civilized. And above all else, probably very well respected, even by the barbarians; how else would such a person remain safe out here?_

 _So down we went. Coz of course, we were looking for a lot more than protection. We were looking for the Whispering, the reason we'd come to this dump. A rackety old wooden house...good place to build a nest. Maybe._

 _Had a nasty incident on the way down there though. A tribe attacked us. Shot me in the leg (ouch) and came_ this close _to capturing us. Help, however, was to arrive in an unexpected form..._


	12. The Second Adventure II

There's only been two occasions previously when I was certain I was about to die. The first occasion was when I was twenty. It was getting near to the end then. My old lifestyle, that is. It all changed about two weeks afterwards. Changed for the better, I hasten to add. The second occasion, of course, was the first time I met the Doctor, the horrific injuries I sustained.

So that moment on Kriak represented the third (and not the last) time when I was sure that it were curtains. Lying there on the ground, the Doctor crippled by an arrow to the leg, a pair of savages leering down upon us...

* * *

 _ **The Second Adventure Part 2**_

* * *

"Git!" bellowed a thunderous voice from behind us. I screamed and looked around, feeling the barbarian's rancid breath on the back of my neck. There, standing behind us, was another man. A man with flowing blonde hair and a goatee, with a full steel plate of armour around his torso, and further armour strapped to his legs. He held a sword and shield. I stared at him in disbelief. He was magnificently handsome. Just like a fairytale Prince. He'd just come out of the big manor, and was standing there, at a height of well over six feet, glaring at the tribes people.

"I say! Git!" he bellowed again, slapping his sword against his shield, producing a noise like a pair of cymbals. "You just let those people be, Ghunar. You hear me, sir? Let them be, or else pay with your life!"

I turned around. The tribesman and woman (Ghunar and, I presumed, his wife) were glaring at the man with contempt and (to my relief) a good healthy amount of fear. I looked back to the knight in shining armour, who bashed his weapon and shield together a second time. Inviting them to take a step forward. Inviting them to challenge him.

Not a bit of it; to the contrary, the tribe backed off. Even the horses whined, and stomped on the spot in distress. The man, Ghunar, growled like a wild animal. "It a hunt," he growled, "hunt sacred. Ghunar bowman hit!" He pointed at the Doctor, who was laying there in silence, clutching his skewered leg. Ghunar pointed at me. "Ghunar bowman miss! Paladin... can take miss! Ghunar... take hit!"

The English (or whatever language it really was) was poor. But I got the gist of it. The Doctor had been downed. He belonged to the tribe now, so they thought. He was their catch. But they'd missed me. They were willing, therefore, to let me go.

"No, sir," the Knight said at once, "Paladin will take both. The one you hit and the one you didn't. Ghunar will take neither. Your hunting on our grounds, Ghunar. These creatures belong to me."

Ghunar growled and took a step forward. At once, the knight lashed out, flinging his sword through the air with a swishing sound. Ghunar yelped and leapt backwards. " _Yah_!" the Paladin cried, cutting through the air a second time. "Get you gone! Go! Nobody dies today. Not in our grounds. Get you all gone!"

Ghunar looked at his wife, who looked at him. "We go now." The woman said firmly, clutching her husbands' arm. She was terrified of the Paladin. Utterly terrified. In the distance, the rest of the tribe shuffled about nervously. Way back, atop the hill, the bowman stood motionless. Either of them could have shot at the Paladin. Probably hit him as well; they'd gotten the Doctor, and missed me by only the narrowest of margins. But neither of them moved.

Ghunar snarled at the Paladin one last time, and glared down at me and the Doctor. Then with a grunt he raised a hand. The tribe at once turned around and made their way back up the hill. Ghunar and his wife shot us a final, evil look and mounted their horses, which wheeled around and galloped away after the tribe.

I let out a huge sigh of relief. I realised that I hadn't actually been breathing throughout the encounter. I felt faint, but ecstatically happy...we were safe!

Or...were we? Who was this guy? I looked around again at him, and saw with another thrill of relief that he was smiling.

"Just like those rouges to treat a lady like this," he sighed, offering me his hand, and pulling me to my feet. "Not a courteous bone in their body, I fancy. Are you all right?"

"I am." I said. "Cheers, buddy. For saving us, I mean..."

"My pleasure, dear lady. My pleasure." he looked down at the Doctor. "And you sir, I can see, are not all right. Here -"

Before the Doctor could protest, the knight bent down and scooped the Doctor up in his arms. The Doctor groaned in pain as the movement stretched the wound in his leg. The knight flung the Doctor over his metal-clad shoulder in a perfectly executed fireman's lift. Not that it would be called a fireman's lift on this planet. There weren't any firemen.

"Come hither," he told me, winking and making me blush, "let us go inside where it's safe. Lest those brutes get silly on mead and feel brave enough to return. It's happened before."

"You talk like a twit." The Doctor said bluntly, as he flopped uselessly on the man's shoulder. "Anyone told ya that before?"

" _Doctor_!" I said to him sternly.

"Oh yeah...and thanks pal. For getting us outta that, I mean. Appreciate it. Sorry fer being rude, just in a certain among of agony right now."

"I can well understand." The Paladin said pleasantly. "No need to apologize. Those arrows are tipped with an unpleasant, but not fatal type of poison. You will, for some hours, feel as though you've consumed an entire barrel of cider over one night. But it will pass."

"A hangover, in other words," I said, smirking. The Paladin shrugged. I could tell he didn't quite understand my more modern way of speaking.

"Nah, not me," the Doctor said, "I can taste it in me bloodstream. Seems to be a very diluted solution of the Janis thorn poison. The purest form certainly kills, even Time Lords. But this won' have any effect on me at all."

"Shame," I said sarcastically, sticking my tongue out at him. He glared at me upside down, his head clattering against the Paladin's armour plates.

"So who are you?" I asked the Paladin as we made our way to the doors of the manor.

"The Paladin." He replied simply, knocking on the oak door.

"Yeah, but...that's a kinda knight, ain't it? What are you actually called?"

"Just the Paladin, ma'am," the handsome knight replied, his eyes narrowing. "That's all I'm ever called."

"Like him, then?" I said, nodding at the Doctor. "He's just called the Doctor."

The Paladin smiled. "Yes, yes. And thank-you both. I thank you for coming so quickly."

"Sure," I said flippantly, smiling. Then I paused. "Pardon me?"

Before the Paladin could reply, the oak doors swung open. A young woman of about eighteen stood before us, dressed in a maid's outfit. "Paladin. You all right?" She asked in a high, breathless voice. I smirked. Very obviously, she fancied him. Me too.

"Yes, yes. Thank you, Maid. They haven't the talent to harm me, nor the courage to try. Now listen; I want you to go to Patient at once. Tell her that the Doctor's arrived."

The maid's eyes widened. "Already, sir? We sent our messenger bird to the village but two hours ago. Tis' a day's walk from there!"

I shut my eyes...Paladin? Maid? Patient? What the blazes was going on here?

Evidently the Doctor felt the same. "Who's in charge here?" he demanded from his upside-down spot on the Paladin's shoulder.

"Nobleman." The Paladin replied at once. I giggled. Who else? "I'll take you, Doctor, to him first. We shall sort your leg as best as we can."

"Well, thank you," the Doctor said pleasantly, "who's patient?"

"All will be explained, sir." The Maid assured him. "Come in, come in."

She held the door wide open and allowed us all in. We walked into a decorative, candle-hit hall, with a thin green-grey carpet and a wall decorated grey and a very light red. Several portraits hung along the walls. I recognized one of them at once; Paladin. Next to him, a bearded old man with a flowing blue cloak. His name, like all of their names, was included at the bottom left of the picture. This one was Nobleman. To my surprise, there was even a picture of Maid. Portraits of the servants? To her left, a man in chefs' overalls. If you can't guess his name and role, then get back to school at once. There was also a sickly young woman with a pale face and brown, flowing hair. She was lying in bed, smiling weakly. Patient, I supposed. There were a handful of others, including a woman at or near the Nobleman's age. Probably his wife. What would she be? Lady? Ma'am? Mi'lady?

Something odd was happening here.

There was an uneven wooden staircase, leading up into a darkened, ominous looking upper floor. Inwardly, I hoped that we wouldn't be going up there. I still wasn't sold on the structural integrity of the place. Certainly, I could see no evidence of solid stone support beams or such features inside. I tried not to think of the intense weight of the brick roof, held up on the wooden frame of the house. There was a door to our left, and one to our right. The Paladin went through the one to the left, taking the Doctor with him.

"Would you like to come with me, ma'am?" The Maid said graciously to me, smiling. "I'll take you to the drawing room.

I shook my head. "Nah, I'd rather stay with the Doc." I said. "Can't draw to save me life, anyhow."

The maid frowned. "No," she said uncertainly, "by drawing room I mean the guest's parlor."

"Oh, right," I said, feeling embarrassed, "well, nah. I'll go with the Doc."

"You can't miss." The maid told me solemnly. "The Nobleman wants to speak to the Doctor alone."

"Oh, get stuffed." I said flippantly, turning my back on the maid and marching through the door to the left, the same way the Paladin had taken the Doctor. I walked into a large, airy room with two large, red sofas with a round wooden table between them. Above a chandelier hung. Obviously not an electric one; candles. There was a lit fireplace, and several very smart rugs. The Doctor had already been laid down on one of the sofas, and the Paladin was examining his leg wound, the arrow still sticking out of it.

"I'll have to pull it out." The Paladin said apologetically.

The Doctor nodded grimly. "I know, mate. This'll hurt, won't it?"

"It will. Very badly."

"Go for it." The Doctor said, shutting his eyes.

The Paladin did just that. Clamping the Doctor's leg down with one hand, he grabbed the arrow with the other. In one quick, violent movement, he ripped the thing from the Doctor's leg. The Doctor's eyes opened wide and his teeth clenched. Droplets of blood flew through the air as the arrow was torn loose.

" _Pain_ ," he whispered, shaking uncontrollably, " _pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain..._ "

"Ya'll right, chuck?" I asked him in a mock-northern accent, trying to take his mind off the pain.

"Yeah, yeah," the Doctor lied, smiling, "never better."

"Right then!" The Paladin said brightly, a satisfied smile on his face. "Just you lie still, while I bandage it up."

"Just a 'mo!" The Doctor said, as the Paladin advanced on him with a strip of dirty gauze and a bowl of water. "Ain't you got any antiseptic?"

"Any what?"

"Summin' to stop it gettin' infected, mate!" The Doctor said. Then he paused, and remembered where he was. "Of course you don't. Oh dear..."

"That's um...vaguely worrying." I said, frowning. As an ex-druggie, I was no stranger to the dangers that unclean wounds could result in.

"Forget it," the Doctor said grimly, "I'm immune to most infections. Most."

"Great." I said, as the Paladin set to work, bandaging the Doctor's leg. There was still, however, a wound going the whole way through underneath. How would we be able to find Rose with him in that state?

He read my mind. "We'll find her." He promised me. "I ain't got no antiseptic, but I have got _these_!" From his bigger-inside pockets, he produced two long, metal poles. I burst into laughter. Crutches.

The Paladin gasped, and then applauded. "Marvelous, sir!" he laughed. "Marvelous! Quite the magician."

"Plenty more where that came from." The Doctor replied smugly.

"I thought people from the old days hated magic and stuff?" I demanded.

"Dear lady, you are quite the beauty in these wild lands," the Paladin said sadly, "but I confess, I've no idea what you say half the time."

"Right." I said, turning to the Doctor. "So now what? You set to move?"

"I am," the Doctor replied. "But...I don't think these fine people are ready for us to leave yet. Are you?"

"Why, no!" the Paladin said in surprise. "You came, did you not, to make the patient well again?"

The Doctor smiled uncertainly. "Well, I gotta be honest, pal. We uh...we aren't..."

"Your the Doctor! We sent for a doctor, and here you are!"

"Well, mate that's...true I guess, but the fact is that we...well, okay. What's wrong with her?"

"The Nobleman will talk with you about that." The Paladin replied.

"And where is he?" I asked. "I thought we were meant to be meeting him?"

"You are." Came a voice from the corner of the room. There was a little door there, and the Nobleman had slipped through, unnoticed when the Doctor was having the arrow pulled from his leg. He looked like his portrait. Bearded, rather old, his hair somewhere between brown and grey. He wore the same blue coat.

"I'm glad you're feeling better," the Nobleman said to the Doctor, sitting down on the opposite couch. "And I'm pleased to hear that you are willing to help. Especially when I consider that you have no obligation to do so. You are not the doctor."

"I um..." the Doctor exchanged an awkward glance with me.

To my relief, the Nobleman smiled. "I've lived, my friend, in this valley for all my life. Unlike the Paladin here, who came to be at my service but a year ago." The Paladin stood there awkwardly. "You think I do not know the face and voice of the only doctor down in the nearest village? He's a dear friend of mine. A friend I trust dearly. A friend I am sure will now, as we speak, be making the dangerous journey here."

"To help the Patient?" I asked.

The Nobleman nodded sadly. "Yes, ma'am. To help the Patient."

"And what's wrong with the Patient, sir?" The Doctor asked, sitting up, gritting his teeth against the pain in his leg.

The Nobleman and the Paladin exchanged a frightened look. "In short, sir - everything. Come. Let us go and see her."

"Okay," the Doctor said at once, standing up very gingerly, supporting himself on the crutches. "Who is she? What relation to you two?"

"My daughter." The Nobleman said. "And the Paladin's wife to be. Which is why you must save her. If you say you can help, I am desperate enough to believe you. I think we cannot wait for the real doctor to come. So do you magic. Make her well. Do so, and I will grant you anything you wish."

"Anything, eh?" The Doctor said. "Including, just possibly, the services of the Paladin here for a day or two?"

"It would be a pleasure." The Paladin said. "If my master does agree."

The Nobleman thought it through. "Yes. But first...the patient."

So, walking/hobbling from the room, we made our way upstairs (oh dear). As we did do, I glanced again at the portraits. There was something in them I didn't like.

The Doctor noticed me looking at them, and caught my eye and whispered to me. "Do you see what's wrong with them?"

"No." I admitted.

"I do. Something's wrong here. Just play along for now. We have to get outta here alive if we're gonna save Rose."

"Okay," I whispered back, a harsh chill running through me. "They're lying about something, aren't they?"

The Doctor nodded. I knew. Maybe it was the way the Paladin never looked me directly in the eye. Or the way the Nobleman had appeared like that. Or something...I just knew. The answer, I thought, was staring me in the face. But I didn't see it. Not yet. But I would, soon.

As we struggled up the stairs I looked over my shoulder again at the portraits.

And I was scared.

* * *

 ** _The Doctor's Diary, Entry 1965 Part 2_**

* * *

 _I knew it was all pretend. Course I did. The Maid, the Paladin, the Patient, the Nobleman? Gimme a break! It's a fantasy. My buddy knew there was something wrong at that point. She looked at the portraits, and she was what was wrong. She just hadn't realised she's seen it._

 _But this ain't the first time I've been held prisoner in someone else's make-believe world. I knew then and know now that the best way to escape is to play along for as long as possible. And to that effect, we went to see the Patient. Daughter of the Nobleman, bride to be of the Paladin. Just like in the fairy tales._

 _The tribes outside, I knew, were as real as you and I. I've still got the hole in my leg to prove that. The tribes thought that the manor and it's occupants were real. Said occupants, I knew, also believed themselves to be real..._

 _We needed answers. We needed to escape. We needed to find the Whispering. If I die, nobody else in the universe can stop it. Not any more._


	13. The Second Adventure III

So there we were. Trapped in some crazy sort of charade. But set up by who? And, more to the point, set up for who?

Although none of the people (if indeed they were people) had threatened us in any way, there was a definite presence in that big old house. An oppressive presence. At first I thought that might be the heavy roof weighing down on the house, but I came to realize it was more than that...

Meeting Patient shed more than a little light on the matter.

* * *

 ** _The Second Adventure Part 3_**

* * *

"Cor blimey," the Doctor muttered, scanning Patient with his sonic screwdriver (the sonic spear, thankfully, stowed away aboard the Tardis). "You've been through the mill, my dear, ain't ya?"

The Patient was beautiful. Correction; would have been beautiful. But she was ill. Very ill. Her skin was a grey mask, stretched so thin over her skull that the shapes of the bones were visible. Her eyes were half-open and desperate, her mouth screwed up against the pain of whatever hideous affliction she was suffering. She was about my age. Her hair was long, brown, and brushed - clearly somebody (perhaps the Maid, perhaps the Paladin) had been washing and brushing her hair each day. Despite being clean and neatly brushed, it was thin, an effect of her illness. Thin like all of all. Though everything below her chest was hidden under the furs which they used as blankets, I could see how terribly thin she was. Thinner than me. Thinner even than me at the height of my old habits.

They'd put her in a nice enough room. The large window let plenty of light in, and a huge vase of flowers by the wardrobe meant that a light, pleasant odour hung about the room. There was also a wardrobe, a great fat wooden thing four stumpy little legs. A chamber pot sat on the windowsill. I didn't see what good it was doing there; I was no medical expert, but looking at patient I couldn't imagine that she could move of her own accord. She could barely open her eyes. She looked at me and the Doctor as Paladin introduced us, moving only her eyes and not her whole head. Maybe she understood what was happening around her, maybe she didn't. Either way, she wouldn't - couldn't - respond. She was dribbling, and I wondered if she was brain damaged in some way. That being the case, was there actually anything the Doctor _could_ do for her? I looked at her in dismay. Poor girl.

"Cor blimey," the Doctor said again, double checking his readings. "I've never seen anything like it. She oughta be dead. She ought to 'ave died months ago."

"Don't speak of it!" The Paladin exclaimed, placing his big manly hand on his love's skeletal spider-like hand. Her fingernails had gone yellow.

"Sorry pal," the Doctor said, propping himself up with his crutches, "but the poor girl's in a bad way."

"That's hardly news to me, good Doctor." The Paladin snapped. "Perhaps you know what's to be done about it?"

"Happen I know what's wrong with her," the Doctor replied, "which is is a start. Lynsey?"

"What?"

"Know what's wrong with her?"

I shrugged. "Nah. Your the expert, Doc."

" _Doctor_ ," the Doctor corrected me curtly, "and yeah, I'm amazing. But they were right, you know."

"Who?"

"Pally the Paladin and Nellie the Nobleman. They said "everything" was wrong with her, and that's pretty much it. She's failing. Everything, failing. All her organs. Her immune system. Her temperature's through the roof, and she's only semi-conscious. And look 'ere."

The Doctor hopped closer to the bed and gently placed a hand on her desiccated jaw. He prised her mouth open, revealing a set of teeth which were surprisingly white.

The Doctor noted this, and the Paladin shrugged. "Myself and Maid do all we can for her. Trim her nails, cut her hair. Keep clean her teeth."

"Nice of ya," the Doctor said distantly, "Lynsey, 'ave a look in her mouth."

I did so. And my own mouth fell open. There was no tongue. Just teeth, and an empty cave-like mouth. The Doctor pulled a large yellow torch from his pocket (of course) and shone it down her mouth. Far down her throat, there was a wound. It was bright red and looked horribly sore.

"Blimey O'Riley on a flying blue chariot..." I said, clutching my cheeks. "What happened to her tongue?"

"Seems it were confiscated," the Doctor said. He turned to the Paladin. "Right-o, pal. I'm gonna make two informed guesses here. One - her tongue was ripped out. Probably by the same charming people who put a hole in me leg for me. Two - somehow she survived that. But shortly after, maybe one day, maybe two, she fell badly ill. Comprende?"

"Right on both counts, sir," the Paladin said. "This was but a month ago. I shan't go into detail. But a tribe of the hills - not the same tribe as that which attacked you - halted me and her as we rode back from the village. We fought. She was, in her health, magnificent with a crossbow. But alas, we were captured. We were rescued by Nobleman and a handful of villagers. But too late. They tore her tongue out for light entertainment."

"I thought the lot we met were bad..." I said weakly.

"The tribe who did this to my beautiful fiancee," the Paladin continued, "no longer exist. This crime was their last crime. Our revenge was swift. And absolute. Not a man, woman nor child of the tribe survived."

"Great." The Doctor muttered sarcastically.

"Patient was, of course, in a terrible state." Paladin said. "Her pain was unbearable. Gone was her ability to speak. Eating was of no pleasure, for nothing tasted, and every swallow was torture. But she was alive. What's been done to her horrifies me, Doctor. But never could I be without her. Never."

"Sweet," the Doctor replied quickly, "how long have you known Patient?"

"Oh, a year sir." Paladin replied. "Upon the tragedy which befell her, we brought our wedding forward. We should by now have been married. But within two days of her injuries, she fell ill suddenly and violently."

"Infection." I said grimly, turning to the Doctor. "That's it, right?" My flesh was beginning to creep. Something just now - something said or done, some part of the tall tale the Paladin told - was wrong. So _obviously_ wrong that I couldn't see it. Like the portraits. There was something so obviously wrong with them that it was impossible to spot. That's what made this whole game of Kings and Queens so immersive, so utterly hard to work out. It was obviously fake. The names of the players were well enough to know that. Yet maybe it was that very fact, the fact it didn't even try to be truly believable, which made it impossible to work out.

"Infection, yeah," the Doctor said. He was looking at me, a half-smile tugging at his lips. He knew everything I was thinking.

"So Paladin," the Doctor said, "your fiancee should be dead. I might be able to save her. Might. Strong antibiotics might do the trick, it may not be too late. But I need to go back outside. To my...my camp. That's where my medicine is stored."

"Then we shall make haste at once!" The Paladin exclaimed, "I shall ready some horses!"

"You do that." The Doctor said, grinning.

"You mean it, sir? You can save her?" The Paladin grinned from ear-to-ear.

"I hope to," the Doctor replied, waving his hand. "Go now - horses."

He gave Patient a kiss on her dry, chapped lips and rushed from the room. I looked down at Patient. Shame this was all setup. His love for his Patient seemed very real, and I wondered in that moment whether we actually needed to do anything about this; if it was real to them, couldn't we leave it be?

And then, quite suddenly, I realized.

Eyes wide, I looked back at Patient. My mouth dropped open again. I rounded on the Doctor, who smiled, happy I'd finally got there. "Patient..." I gasped.

"Patient." The Doctor repeated, nodding. "This girl became ill a month ago. But the portrait in the hall, the portrait which is over two years old, shows her exactly as she looks now, and names her as Patient. She's not _a_ patient, she's _the_ Patient. She's _always_ been the Patient. She's _always_ been the ill member of the team. And that tongue of hers. That wound ain't right. If someone 'ad hacked her tongue out with a knife, she'd 'ave bled to death. That wound is too clean a cut for that. It's the work of a laser, Lynsey. It's definetley the work of a laser."

"I'm disturbed at this point," I said weakly.

"Your right to be," the Doctor said, "Now come on. Let's get outta here. I don't believe this girl is ill, and I don't believe she's truly in any pain. Nor do I believe Paladin has gone to get the horses."

"Why d'you say that?" I demanded nervously.

The Doctor shrugged. "You see that nice big window?"

"Sure."

"It's a hologram. That wall doesn't lead to outside. It leads to another room."

I stared at the wall.

"Ain't that right?" The Doctor called out. "I know ya watching, fellas. Come on, the game's up."

I gasped as a whirring noise started up from that side of the room. In a moment straight out of Monster's Inc, the whole wall started to rise up into the ceiling. "Simulation terminated." I muttered. Totally ignoring us, Patient climbed out of the bed and walked towards the rising wall, ducking under it before it rose the whole way up. She walked quickly and steadily. Not the shuffle of someone feeling ill. The measured walk of somebody who'd been in this situation many times before. As it slowly did open fully, a large room filled with spectators revealed itself. A large room with modern whitewashed walls, and computers. A large room with screens and monitors.

The cast - the Paladin, the Maid, and the Nobleman, along with several others who hadn't been in service this particular day - were sitting, disconnected, in small holds to the side of the room. They were being recharged. As I watched, Patient sat herself down on the only empty one, and slumped forwards without a word.

Robots.

A man in a green tunic and matching green trousers stood up from his desk at the front of a room. He was holding a gun.

"Hands up," he said calmly. We did so at once.

"Neat place you got here." The Doctor said. "So is there a prize for the correct diagnosis?"

"No." The man replied softly, smiling.

"Oh. Or a job offer, perhaps?" The Doctor grinned back at the man.

"No."

"Fair enough. Would there be a punishment by any chance?"

The man smiled wider. "Yes."

The Doctor, still grinning, nodded. "Thought there might be."

I face-palmed. Typical.

* * *

 ** _The Doctor's Diary, Entry 1965 Part 3_**

* * *

 _So, big shocker - it was all a setup. Course it was. Designed to weed out clever people. Well no, not clever people. Simply people more clever than the natives here, which isn't a remotely hard ask. We both worked it out (though me first, of course). Poor, sick Patient was a droid, as were all the people. No wonder the tribes outside were so darn scared. You can't fight off a robot with swords and arrows, and I'm sure some of them probably tried that at first, with rather gory results. Hence why they were so scared of the Paladin when he saved us._

 _But why did he save us, I hear you ask? Okay, it was all a setup. But to what end? What was the point?_

 _The answer was surprisingly personal for me. Strangely uplifting in a way, despite the fact they wanted to prosecute us...it was uplifting to know what there were still people who cared enough to keep an eye on time travel. People who still honoured the Time Lords._

 _But they were none too receptive when I tried to explain that I was more qualified in these matters._


	14. The Second Adventure IV

We were arrested. Great.

* * *

 ** _The Second Adventure Part 4_**

* * *

"You are hereby detained," the man said in a bored, monotonous voice, "on suspicion of offences contrary to the Official Continuity Regulation, Article Seven, Subsection B(i)(3), which states clearly that no sentient lifeforms inhabiting, or visiting, the territory of the New United Kasterborous Accord shall not visit, nor attempt to visit, influence, or attempt to influence, any planet of a ranking below level three, before such a time as they develop of their own accord. By attempting to cure the droid by means of antibiotics, a medicine that is not due to be discovered here on level two Kriak for another five-hundred years, we submit that you have breached this regulation, introducing advancements to this world before their time.

"Oh, you can bore off," I exclaimed angrily. "We were just trying to help out."

"Watch your mouth," the man retorted, "don't make this any the worse for yourself."

We (that is to say me, the Doctor and the boss guy) were sat in a tiny interview room, set up very much like the police interview rooms I'd frequented back home. The walls were blue plaster, the seats plastic and comfortless. To my left shoulder was a mirror. A mirror which, I knew, certainly wasn't there for me to examine my reflection; I wondered how many people were behind it, watching us.

"You." The man barked, pointing at the Doctor. "You seem to be the brains behind the op. Anything to say for yourself?"

"Yeah," the Doctor said, sitting up straight, and resting his elbows on the table. "Yeah. Why?"

"Why?" The man frowned.

"Yeah. Why. Why here? I get that your on some sorta undercover sting operation. But why Kriak in particular? Why this part of Kriak? What gives?"

"You tell me." The man snapped.

"I can't," the Doctor said testily, "I've only just gotten 'ere. Look, pal...are you what I think you are?"

The man chuckled coldly. "I'm not sure who you think we are," he replied, "but I can tell you who we _actually_ are. Time police, for want of a better word. We police the timelines of the universe, because there's nobody else to do it anymore. In times' gone by, there was a race...a wonderful, wonderful race...who looked after time. Who policed it, who kept it safe and in order. The Time Lords. But they're gone now. If not for people like us, people like you would be changing history left, right and centre. And that would never do. Would it?"

"S'pose not," the Doctor said. "But...c'mon, just imagine we were totally innocent for a sec-"

"-which we are." I snapped bluntly.

"Hush, Lynnie P!" The Doctor replied hastily, "the gentleman _knows_ we're as guilty as two kids with their 'ands trapped in a cookie-jar. Don't you, mate?"

"Yes. I do know that." The man replied softly, smiling. "But go on."

"Right. So imagine we were just...passing through. Pretend, for a sec, we aren't a pair of hardened time meddlers...tell me; why the set up? Why here, why now?"

The man thought it over. He was chewing the end of a pen, studying the Doctor thoughtfully. Finally, he shrugged. "Yeah, all right. We had reports from this area, see."

"Ah ha!" The Doctor exclaimed. "Reports! Well, well, well! Reports about what?"

"Time distortions." The man hissed. "Localized time distortions. Care to explain that?"

"No." The Doctor said, grinning.

"Thought not. Well anyway...time distortions. They don't happen on a level two cesspit like this. Not unless...complete my sentence for me..."

"Unless a time traveller's messin' around here." The Doctor said, nodding.

"Yep. So I said to myself...Detective Superintendent Sloke, that is...I said to myself, there's one sure fire way to catch 'em. Stage a situation whereby they'd have to reveal 'emselves. You offered her antibiotics. The fake patient. Antibiotics! In a dump like this! And that evidence will ensure you go away for a long time. Clever, huh?"

"Oh yeah!" The Doctor exclaimed, rocking back on his seat. His crutches were leaned against the wall. "Yeah, great work."

"Apart from one thing." I interrupted.

"Go on."

"We aren't the right people." I said. "Sure, we offered to help that girl...but this time distortion stuff ain't nothing to do with us. We're here -"

"No." The Doctor growled softly.

"Oh, I think yes." Sloke laughed, raising his finger to silence the Doctor. "Yes. Your here...I'd be fascinated to know how that sentence is gonna end."

"We're tracking down a monster." I said defiantly.

Sloke raised his eyebrows.

"Yeah," the Doctor said grudgingly, "a monster that's got my mate. We're chasing it down. And let me go out on a limb here - it's what caused the time distortions."

Sloke lit a cigar. To my surprise, he shook the packet at me and the Doctor. Evidently he wasn't an officer to whom health and safety were a concern. We both declined. He lit his own and took a long drag. "All right." He said. "Say I was satisfied by that hogwash, which I'm _not_...we've still got you. Hook, line and sinker. Offering antibiotic treatment to someone from a primitive world. So you thought, anyway...it's a crime, amigos. A serious crime. And I'm gonna see you tried on the harshest of charges."

He clapped his hands, and two guards marched in at once. I rose from the chair, glaring at Sloke who smiled sadistically back at me. As the Doctor stood, he stumbled against one of the guards and leaned on the man's shoulder to steady himself. The other guard, glaring, tossed him his crutches.

"Cells." Sloke commanded. "Prisoner rations. We'll set course for home planet tomorrow."

And with that, we were led from the interview room and to our cell. I wondered what would actually happen if they did lock us up forever? Short answer; the universe would get half-eaten by the Whispering. It could do it. It would do it...this bunch of clowns were the Dad's Army of time travel. Far fetched sting operations, hasty arrests, idiot in charge...

But it wouldn't come to that. As we were thrown roughly into a shared cell (with two iron beds, each with the thinnest foam mattresses), the door locked firmly behind us, I sighed deeply. The Doctor did the same.

I looked at him and he at me. "Well," I said grudgingly, "that went well, huh?"

"Yep." The Doctor said, rolling his eyes.

"I reckon we should be off now," I continued, "don't you?"

"Yeah," the Doctor replied, "let's leave at once."

I grinned as he pulled the key from his pocket; the same key that he'd taken from the guard he'd pretended to stumble against back in the cell. We waited a little; a minute perhaps. Then, moving as quietly as possible, the Doctor inserted the key gently into the lock and twisted it. It was remarkable - for an elite secret time travel force, they still used lock and key.

"Well yeah," the Doctor explained, "stops people gettin' out using hidden sonic devices."

"Cool beans," I shrugged, "reckon there's a guard out there?"

"Let's find out," the Doctor laughed, wrenching the door open. "I'll 'ave to hobble for me life. If I get caught, you run. Tardis'll take you back home."

"Rubbish to that." I retorted. "No way am I leaving ya."

"Lynsey!" He said sternly. "I mean it! We could spend up to eighty years inside if they catch us again...nothing for me...but think what that means for you!"

"I don't care." I said firmly. "We'll both get out, or neither of us will."

He opened his mouth to argue - but decided the better of it at the last moment. And with that, we opened the door gently and slid out...

* * *

We crashed through the Tardis doors, laughing.

"We did it!" The Doctor exclaimed, punching the air and dancing around the console room, propping himself up on his crutches.

My smile faltered and I looked him uncertainly. "Did what?"

"We got away! We did it! Blimey, that were close for a moment..."

"Yeah..." I said. "Yeah, we came out of the cell...then ran out of the base..."

"Yep! we were fantastic!" The Doctor said, punching the air. "And you know something else?"

"What?" I said quietly. I was feeling a bit...a bit off balance. We'd gotten back very quickly.

"Time distortions," the Doctor said, now taking on a more serious, somber attitude, "these types are _not_ caused by something arriving. Them idiots don't know that, of course. But I do. They're caused by something leaving."

I stared at him. "You mean..."

"Rose has been and gone, yeah." The Doctor said quietly. "I can still track where they went. But the next place we go, I'm gonna use the emergency booster systems. We arrived too late this time. They probably left ages ago. Next time, we'll face them. We'll get her. And we'll get rid of the Whispering."

"Good plan." I said. "How likely are we to manage?"

The Doctor shrugged. "Let's find out."

He jerked the lever down, and with a metallic humming noise, we were off.

I looked at him, and then at the central column thoughtfully...time distortions...

* * *

 ** _The Doctor's Diary, Entry 1965 Part 4_**

* * *

 _So yeah, like I said; the boss dude wasn't that keen on me. I could've stuck around and proven to him that I was a Time Lord - and as such, that I outranked him by a country mile - but...well, things to do. People to see, multi-dimensional hunters to catch._

 _I used my magnificent skills to steal the key, and we left without anyone being any the wiser. Oh, I'd have loved to have seen Sloke's face when he was told we'd made off. I think that's the first time in a long time that I'd escaped without any problem at all...out of the cell, out through the disguised castle part, across the barbarian filled hills, and back to the Tardis. Not bad for a man on crutches, and his plucky young friend._

 _So we're off. Not sure where we're going next, but we won't be too late this time._

 _Bit of a waste of time, Kriak. Got injured, nearly got duped into healing a robot, got arrested...and the Whispering had already long gone whilst all this was happening. Well no more. Wherever we go next, I'm gonna make sure we're there on time._


	15. Interval - Lynsey At Eighteen: Spoonhead

All in all, the time of the aliens didn't mess with me _too much_. I guess. That stuff with Oddbob was sure nasty, but aside from that...well, the only other thing that really effected me personally (and indeed, everyone) was the Dalek invasion of 2009. I never came face to face (or rather, eyes to eye) with a Dalek, but I well remember cowering in fear at home, as they patrolled the streets just outside the flat...

But it were funny times. Paranoid, confused times. As the years wore on, and the aliens kept coming, it became harder to tell what was a genuine threat and what wasn't. And even when the danger was there, it became difficult to say for certain whether it was alien doing...remember, there's evil aplenty right here on Earth. Over those dark, dangerous years (I repeat, circa 2005 to circa 2010, with some exceptions) there were easily as many false alarms as there were genuine alien threats. Or were there? Of those false alarms, perhaps some were genuine after all... do you see the point I'm trying to make? It became hard to know who to trust. Too easy to panic, too easy to label any random weird goings on as alien work, even though it wasn't, and likewise to label alien work as random weird goings on...

Which brings me to the Spoonhead incident.

* * *

 ** _2013, Lynsey Perron at eighteen_**

So it began, as a lot of my life stories do, with a bar, an angry bartender, and a state of drunken stupidity. That summer's night, I'd hit the town by myself. My mate Lauren Howle was meant to come, but bailed at the last moment. Something to do with her boyfriend. I remember getting a little angry when she texted me to let me know it was off. Remember, I was on the verge of full-on alcoholism at this stage in my life and I'd spent that whole day pining for a drink. All day, my mind had been screaming for evening to arrive, my eyes darting to the nearest clock repeatedly. I wanted a drink. I needed a drink.

And then my drinking buddy cancelled.

Most people would just shrug it off, download a movie, and have a stay-in night. But I couldn't. Well, I could. But I wouldn't be enjoying the movie. I'd spend the evening with a slight headache, craving a drink. So, powerless to resist, I went out by myself. Not a full-on night out, like we'd planned; pre-drinks at mine, taxi to the city centre, followed by more drinks in a pub, and finally onto a nightclub for a spot of dancing, a few snorts and an escort back onto the street from a furious bouncer, followed by a "lauhmb doshner", as I often called it by that stage (a lamb doner kebab, to anyone else). The kebab house worker (a perpetually unfriendly man with absolutely no experience or qualifications in catering or cooking, nor any regard for food hygiene) would glare at me, snatch the money and slam a mashed-up pile of stale naan bread, "meat" (flavored strips of salt and fat) and some rancid soggy vegetables, all drowned in some chilli sauce, opened two months after it's best before date and kept out in the heat for the entire day.

Let me go off on a tangent here, and tell you a story about that kebab shop; last year, it was closed down by the council, and the owner fined five thousand pounds. The reason - a fly had landed on the doner meat. If you've never been to a kebab shop (I wouldn't recommend it), you might not know that a kebab starts it's life as a large, pink-brown cylinder of unidentifiable matter. Fair enough, it's probably got a little meat in it. But it's also got a lot of cheap seasoning, additives, grease, oil, and flavorings. You cook it by standing it upright on a spit, where it is rotated automatically by mechanics. You can see it sweating as it cooks, it's mucus and bodily fluids dripping down it's big tube of a body, settling at the bottom of the spit. It's served in strips, which are sliced off by the kebab shop worker with a large knife. As the evening wears on, therefore, this cylinder of unknown but delicious substances gets thinner and thinner, as more and more of it is sliced off. It's meant to be thrown away at the end of the day, and a new one put up the next day. However, I believed then and I believe now that this particular kebab shop (with it's zero star hygiene rating) used the same one for days on end. I've had the food poisoning to prove it. Four times.

So where was I? Oh yeah, the fly. It landed on the doner kebab whilst it was sitting stationary in it's spit (the spit is only turned on when someone orders a kebab). Now, what would _you_ do? Suppose for a sec that you were a kebab shop worker. You see a fly on your produce. Worse still, customers are watching. Do you -

a) turn the spit on? The fly will fly away soon enough, once the kebab heats up. Or if it doesn't, then it's extra flavour for the next idiot who orders.

 **or**

b) splat the fly? You can (or indeed not, if you don't care about making people ill) then cut away the part of the meat that the fly's debris is now squashed onto.

 **or**

c) simply shoo the fly away? You can (or indeed not, if you don't care about making people ill) then cut away the part of the meat that the fly was sitting on.

 **or**

d) take out a bottle of fly-killer, and spray it _directly_ onto the kebab, the same kebab which you know you will shortly be serving people, risking a bio-hazard incident?

I'd hope most people would answer "C" to that, and that they would indeed cut away the part of the monster that the fly had been sat on. But in this particular case, after careful consideration, Mr. Kebab Shop Man decided that the most sensible course of action would be to proceed with option "D", spraying a toxic chemical directly onto the foodstuff which he then proceeded to serve to the poor sods who came to him for dinner.

Did he make anyone ill? I don't know. Maybe. But not seriously ill, I wouldn't think; if he had, surely he'd have gone on trial for grievous bodily harm. But that didn't happen. And he might have gotten away with it. Remember, a customer did see him do it. But then it's just the customer's word against his, right? Yes - except the customer in question (a quick-thinking, pretty young lady who used to like her drink a bit too much) just so happened to have her phone out at the time. And when she saw what he was about to do, she had the sense to record it. The result - _busted!_

This is all by-the-by, however. Because had my friend Lauren not cancelled, that's the night I _would_ have that. It's not the night I ended up having. Oh, I still went out. I couldn't wait another day for some drinks. But it's never as much fun on your own. I ended up at my local pub. Here, I asked for, and was given, a huge selection of drinks - four double-vodka and cokes, a beer, some white wine and a cocktail known as the mudslide. The mudslide was made with vodka Bailey's, some exotic-toxic liqueur which I didn't know, and then milk, chocolate sauce, cream and marshmallows...

Tastes good; like a choccy milkshake, with a hint of the hard stuff. But booze and milk is a ghastly mix. It tasted good going down, but once down it met the rest of the alcohol. And they had a fight. The result; my stomach was evacuated. Over the floor of the pub.

The barmaid wasn't ( _quelle suprise_ ) very impressed about that. She invited me to leave at once. But unlike some people, I don't become very cheerful when I'm drunk. Instead, the opposite. I get contrary. And rude. Unpredictable, even. I decided on that particular night that actually, I'd rather stay a little longer. Have another drink, maybe...

A half-hour later, having been removed by force from the pub, I found myself alone on the streets...and that's where it happened. All I did was try and get on the internet, to book a taxi. Just that. But something else came for me. Something very bad.

It nearly got me.

I was walking through the street, quite on my own. This was about ten-thirty. It was a crossroads, in terms of a Saturday night. Too early for the pubbers to be out, who left between eleven and twelve, and too late for the clubbers, who would now be in the city centre, rather than hanging around a dingy little corner of London like this. So yes; I was quite alone on that street. Though it was indeed summer, the temperature wasn't particularly high that night. Perhaps eleven Celsius, perhaps twelve. Considering I was dressed light (miniskirt, heels, blue crop-top), I was pretty uncomfortable. I remember shivering as I staggered along, wondering where exactly to take myself next. I could go into the city. I could. Whilst sober, I wasn't brave enough to consider clubbing alone. Now bladdered, it seemed like an entirely reasonable idea. So yeah. Could do that. Hop on a bus, drink the night away, wake up feeling horrible. Or if not, I could go for a takeaway; there were no kebab shops nearby, but there was a little Chinese takeaway not so far away. I could phone ahead, have the food ready when I arrived. Could do. Might do.

Or I could simply find another pub, and start drinking again. Whilst tempting, I found myself thinking of an old saying me and my friends made a point of living by; go big, or go home. In other words, do the whole "big night" thing properly, or not at all. Although I'd have liked another drink, there was something very uncool about spending a night sitting alone in a pub, getting wrecked. Going into the city centre alone would be "going big." But truthfully, I couldn't be bothered. I didn't feel so hot. I figured that maybe, just maybe, I'd avoid a hangover tomorrow if I stopped drinking now. So really, that left one option. If I wasn't going big, then I was going home.

So that was that. What remained, and this was all that remained, was how exactly to get back. So I'd walked from the flat myself. But even smashed, I wasn't stupid enough to attempt that walk now, when it was dark. Far too dangerous, some of the places I'd need to walk through. I'd for almost certain run into some kind of trouble. And no buses ran to my home. So I needed a taxi. Huh. Easier said than done at this hour. There were none on the taxi rank. That had been just outside the pub, and it had been empty. I could call the local company, but I knew what the answer would be. No availability. However, there was an app; it would allow me to book there and then, and although here might be somewhat of a wait, I knew it would eventually turn up. So I took the iPhone from my pocket, and...

groaned. No internet.

Cursing, I looked around. I was in the middle of nowhere. Just a dark, empty town full of charity shops and closed cafe's. The road was deserted, and only a few street lights lit my way. Grimacing, I brought up the WiFi page on the phone, and studied the options. Yes, some of the premises flanking me had internet. In theory I could just hijack one of them. But I figured they'd all have passwords. You might be surprised that the proud owner of an iPhone would have these issues; what about 4G? 3G at worst? How can there be no internet?

My iPhone was (probably) counterfeit. I didn't know for sure. I'd picked it up suspiciously cheap at the local trash market. Generally, it worked acceptably. But sometimes (this time) it would play up, and refuse to co-operate. It really picked it's moments, what? Here I was, alone and sauced, no help from anyone else...and it wouldn't connect.

I was about to throw it, when I noticed something rather odd. There was a list of potential connections, right? All with five green bars indicating their strength. All had generic, computer generated gobbledegook names. Hub3WRYFET-2 etc etc. Save one; at the bottom, in large text, one was composed entirely of random figures. Dashes, chunky lines, dashes and stuff. I'd never seen it before. But it had a strong connection, standing at five bars.

And I needed to book a taxi. So I clicked on it. And it worked magnificently. Fast, lag-free connection, that enabled me to book a taxi in minutes, selecting a trusted local company, arranging a pickup at the mini-roundabout which was just five minutes up the street.

I walked there without incident. I met nobody, saw nobody. I stood alone in the unseasonably cold, the chilly wind biting at me, checking my watch every few seconds. I had a twenty-minute wait, which wasn't half as bad as I thought. It occurred to me suddenly how very thirsty I was, how very dehydrated I'd become. Alcohol, far from quenching thirst, serves only to worsen it. I shuddered to think what my headache would be like tomorrow, if I didn't have at least a pint of water between now and bedtime. In the distance, I heard sirens. _Quelle suprise_. Saturday night, busy city. Say no more. I thought that actually, those sirens belonged to a fire engine, which was rather more worrying than when it was police or an ambulance. Was there a serious incident somewhere nearby? I hoped not. I was just looking up the local news on the phone, when I heard a _toot-toot_. I smiled, and glanced at my watch. It was early! First bit of good luck the whole evening, unless you count puking on the floor as opposed to your shoes as good luck. A pair of bright headlights were approaching me from the road to the left. I squinted. It was a small car. Very small. Darn. It was a two-seater. Surely not my taxi, then? But as it rolled up, with a fresh thrill of relief, I saw the logo and name of the taxi firm scrawled on the side. But it didn't look like a taxi. It was a small green sport's car, with an open top! The driver was on the left like in other countries. But then I looked at the driver; he was wearing an Hawaiian shirt of three colours; blue, red and yellow. On his head, an old fashioned chauffeur's cap, which was tilted to the side. He wore a pair of tinted sunglasses, despite the dark, and his left arm hung out over the window, a lit cigar between his fingers, while his other hand rested gently on the wheel. He turned to me and grinned with brown rotten teeth, his face smeared with red and white makeup. It was Oddbob.

As I stared at him in sheer disbelief, a scream about to explode from my mouth, he changed quite suddenly. Even as I watched, the car melted away, and Oddbob was all that remained.

"You," I said weakly, staggering back.

"You." Oddbob repeated right back at me, advancing on me.

"How can it be you?" I whimpered, holding my arms out in front of me, ready to leather him with as many punches as I could throw. Not that, I knew, it would do any good.

"How can it be you?" Oddbob replied flatly. His voice wasn't like I remember. Not jolly, with a raspy American accent. This voice was mechanical and lifeless. I was reminded of Professor Brandywine from Monsters University, the sequel to my second favourite childhood movie, which had been released just that year. I'd secretly downloaded it online. I'd liked it, but it didn't beat the original for me. Or maybe I'd just grown up. Probably just that.

Now, Oddbob was standing up straight. He looked straight ahead, somewhere above my head. As I watched in horror, his head began to turn with a whirring noise. It turned, over his shoulder and, sickeningly, behind him. The back of his head was a hollow metal plate in the shape of a spoon. There was a weird buzzing noise coming from it. I screamed at this point, louder than I think I'd ever screamed before...

And then I was woken up, by a very frantic, skinny man of Asian heritage. "Madam?" He said. "Madam, are you all right?"

I sat up straight. I'd been lying on the pavement. There was no sign of the clown, nor the taxi in which he'd arrived. Instead, a dark-blue ford fiesta was parked on the kerb. My taxi. This guy was the driver.

"I...guess so," I said uncertainly, getting to my feet despite his protests. "Nah, I'm fine...I think I just...just had a moment...I've 'ad a lot tonight, you know."

"I can smell it on you," the driver chuckled dryly, a hint of disapproval in his voice. "Come on - let's get you home, huh? Unless you think you need medical help?"

"I don't think so," I smiled, shaking my head, ignoring the lurches of nausea my stomach was giving. "But if I say pull over, be ready to act fast, all right mate?"

The taxi driver sighed deeply, but was smiling nonetheless. He steered me into the taxi (allowing me to sit in the left side passenger seat), and took me home. I never saw Oddbob again.

So that's my story of the Spoonhead. And you see what I mean, I hope, when I describe the uncertainty that resulted from those years when the aliens just kept coming? What happened that night? Did I meet Oddbob again? Did he come back for me, the one who got away four years previously? And if so, why didn't he take me? Or was it...something else, something which plucked Oddbob from my memory? Or actually, did I pass out and dream the whole thing?

For years, I assumed it was the third of those possibilities. But then I met the Doctor. And these days, I'm more confident that it truly did happen. I don't think it was Oddbob, but it was _something_. To this day, I don't know why it spared me. Did the taxi driver come just in time? Was I too drunk and useless to be of any use? Or indeed, was it a drunk girl's folly?

Who can say?

I just hope I never see that clown again, nor the Spoonhead which came dressed as him. Travel with the Doctor, however, means that danger is never far away.

Everyone knows that.

* * *

 ** _The Doctor's Diary, Entry 1966_**

* * *

 _Bingo!_

 _I've found it! Planet Yaed! Seems to like it there. Maybe it's from a cold climate in it's natural form, I don't know. But what I do know is this; we'll be on time this time. Oh yes. And don't worry about my old leg. There's medicine on the Tardis which can cure basically anything. I'll be fit as a fiddle by the time we land._

 _Probably._

 _To be honest, I'm glad it was me who got injured, rather than my new friend. She knew it was dangerous when she agreed to come. I said it would be, I made no secret of it. But I still feel that I owe her a duty of care. What child wouldn't eat a mountain of sweets if allowed? And what bored shop-worker wouldn't come for adventures in time and space if allowed? Her willingness to come, her understanding of the dangers...that doesn't excuse me from my responsibilities._

 _Because to be honest, if she were to die, I don't know what that would make of me...can the big bad Time Lord stand to lose yet another friend, and still retain his good hearts?_

 _That's not something I'd bet good money on. I'm writing this diary coz it helps me vent. It helps me release the monster inside, bit my bit as opposed to all at once, a horror which the universe might not withstand a second time._

 _So let's make sure she lives. Probably best._

* * *

 **END OF CHAPTER**

* * *

Authors' Note: I do hope everyone is still enjoying this. I'm not entirely convinced that the "Second Adventure" was as good as it could have been, so I'm hoping to turn it around with this chapter and the next ones. As ever, any and all reviews are welcome, complimentary or otherwise :)


	16. The Third Adventure I

We found out where it had gone.

Yaed, a planet of ice. It was a glorious place. Surprisingly, not _too_ _cold_. _Too_ _cold_ had been Ravrock. As the Doctor explained, the water here quite simply froze at a higher temperature. Though we'd landed at high altitude (as the Doctor further explained, the entire planet was a mountain system), the air was rich and fresh.

There was no civilization here. Life, yes. A rich kingdom of animal life, all of which was carnivorous. It had to be carnivorous to live here; there was no vegetation. Only ice and snow, the floor beneath a deep crust of soil through which nothing grew. The water was the ice, and the Doctor told me that some of the creatures here had extremely high body temperatures; they would clamp their jaws over a mound of ice and the heat of their breath would melt it down, turning it into a pool of cold, fresh water. The food, the only food, was the other animals.

But now something different had happened.

An new predator had arrived. The Whispering, which only ate. The Whispering which no other animal who lived here could hunt, or indeed would hunt even if it could. It was now that I saw that the Whispering wasn't really evil. Not really. Only hungry. There was no hatred of humanity, no burning desire to murder people or take over their worlds. Only to eat. Everything was meat, and anything would do; human life or animal alike. Whichever was available.

Rose was a hostage.

Because again, something different had happened. For the first time, the hunter was hunted. The little flesh and blood creature with the massive brain was chasing after it. If protection were ever needed before, why, the little boy had always served to protect it from harm. But the big-brained meaty creature saw straight through the camouflage, to the creature beneath, even if he couldn't understand what it was that he saw.

In as much as the Whispering understood deeper emotions (having only very primal emotions itself) it understood that the other morsel with whom he travelled was loved and cherished by myself, and more so by the big-brained foodstuff himself. Take her and throw her before itself, and the big-brained little thing would stop in his tracks.

The Whispering didn't like different. It liked to eat, changing it's hunting grounds only very rarely. It liked to chase. It didn't like being chased. It wanted it to stop. It thought that probably it would.

But I know better. I know that the Doctor won't ever stop.

* * *

 ** _The Third Adventure Part 1_**

* * *

"In there." The Doctor told me quietly, pointing at a cave at the base of a nearby mountain. We were stood outside the Tardis, on the summit of a large mountain, the largest in the immediate vicinity. In the horizon, glittering like jewels, I could tell that other summits were higher still. We had to be at six thousand meters, but the air was perfect.

The entrance to the cave was an upward crack in the side of that mountain. The inside was dark; too dark. And too narrow. I wondered whether we'd actually get in very far. If it were to narrow further still inside, we might not. Could the Doctor instead simply take us down in the Tardis?

"Nah, no can do," he replied when I asked him just that, "nah, the old girl wouldn't land that close to it. She doesn't like multi-dimensional organisms."

"Oh? Why's that?"

"No idea," the Doctor said flippantly, "just 'ow it is."

He shut the Tardis door. His leg was all better. He'd disappeared deep into the labyrinth of the Tardis when we fled, successfully, from Kriak -

 _\- I don't remember doing it! -_

\- And staggered back into the ship. He'd come back a half-hour later with his leg healed. The skin was red and sore, but the hole left by the arrow had gone. He swallowed a pair of white tablets with a glass of water, smacking his lips. Antibiotics, no doubt.

That was good - ahead of us, we had to negotiate our way down from this cliff, and then proceed through a particularly narrow cave. Couldn't be done with a bad leg. Heck, I wasn't sure it could be done with two good legs! The mountain was horribly steep. I took a cautious, terrified step towards the edge and peered down. There was a shallow downhill walk to a vertical spot which could only be traversed with ropes. After that, it was a steep downward roll, something which might be possibly with sensible shoes, on the hardest of grounds, but which would be highly dangerous in snow, with the both of us wearing trainers.

Evidently the Doctor felt the same. He peered down the cliff and scratched his chin. "Bit high that, innit?" He observed.

"Little bit, yeah," I replied, "yeah. You got climbing gear on board?"

"Somewhere," the Doctor said, "if you wanna climb, that is. I'm not."

"Your not?" I scoffed," well how're we gettin' down there, then?"

"We fall." The Doctor grinned, a madman's glint in his eyes.

"We...uh...we fall?" I said weakly.

"We fall. Me old Tardis has fallen off a cliff plenty, and always been fine. We'll hunker down in there, and take her for a little tumble."

"Yes, but surely..."

"You got a better idea?" He barked. "Better ideas are welcome, Lynsey. But make it quick."

"You sure you can't just fly us down?"

"No. I told you. This is as close as she'll land to it's nest. She can't stand the thing."

I swore softly. "All right then." I said finally. "But how are you gonna knock it down the hill?"

"Oh, I've got some impulse bombs somewhere," he replied, "they send out a shockwave rather than an explosion. Will blow us right down this here hill."

"Right. And then what?"

"And then," the Doctor began, "we get in there. We find Rose, and we get her free from it's influence. Then we take it out. End this once an' for all, get back to some adventuring. What say you?"

"Aye aye," I agreed softly, gritting my teeth. "come on then. Let's get falling."

* * *

The Tardis comes equipped with supplementary oxygen. It comes equipped with medical provisions capable of repairing a whopping great hole in someone's leg. It comes equipped with gas masks, and it comes equipped with a swimming pool.

It doesn't come equipped with seatbelts.

We fished out the Doctor's impulse bombs, and we'd planted one atop the mountain, set on a timer. It wouldn't do any damage at all to the hill. It would simply send out a blast of energy, sending all of the snow, and the little blue box, careering down the cliff face. I was vaguely worried that we might cause an avalanche, and I again asked the Doctor about that. He shrugged it off.

"Doubt it," he replied casually, his grip on the console a lot tighter than normal, "can't promise nothing."

"Great," I retorted, "really. Great."

We were watching the impulse bomb on the scanner. It was down to thirty seconds.

"Best of luck." The Doctor said, offering me his hand.

"Likewise," I said, my mouth dry, "you sure this thing is _invincible_ , right?"

"Nah," the Doctor said waving his free hand, "nothing's _invincible_ Lynsey. But close enough." He added hastily, catching the horrified look on my face. "I remember me first fall in this thing. Ancient Rome. Came outta that without a scratch."

"Yeah? So what was how long ago?"

"Um...uh...nine hundred minus four hundred...yeah, so about five hundred years ago was when that 'appened."

"Right," I said nervously, eyeing the counter. Fifteen seconds. "So it survived a fall five hundred years ago...but your _sure_ it still can?"

"Hmm. Yeah, I see ya point there." The Doctor conceded. "Still, happen your safer in here than out there right now. Ten seconds to go."

And so it was. I bit my lip and gripped the console as tightly as I could. Nine. Eight. Seven...six...five...

"Oh man..." I said weakly.

Four...three...two... ** _ONE!_**

With a stomach churning lurch, the device exploded. A field of faint blue energy shot out in all directions, throwing up snow from the ground. With a sensation very much like being on a rollar coaster, I felt the Tardis get scooped up and thrown, thrown away from the mountain's summit with force, the same force with which someone would hurl a ball across a field for their dog to chase. I screamed as we shot forward, and started to tilt. Myself and the Doctor were lifted off our feet and thrown to the corrugated metal floor, a full on body-slam which sent pains shooting up and down my back and arm, the ghost of injuries past. Although the box outside was now hurling through the air, and falling violently down the hill, slamming against the cliff face as it went, the gravity systems inside meant that although a violent experience, we wouldn't truly feel the sheer force with which the Tardis was careering downhill. I watched on the scanner; all I could see was white sky, snowy ground, white sky, snowy ground, the two images so similar that it was impossible to really tell them apart. The Doctor, to my chagrin, was laughing hysterically, each smash into the cliff face outside producing a violent bump in here, picking us momentarily off the floor, and slamming us back down into it. Hard.

One of the bumps caught my head. As I landed on the floor, my neck snapped back and the back of the head hit the floor. I cried out in pain, stars swimming before my eyes...

* * *

"Hey," the Doctor said softly, touching my cheek. I opened my eyes, my vision blurry. I felt as though my brain had been used as a bowling ball. Every bone ached. I sat up slowly, groaning. The falling had stopped.

"We're down." the Doctor said.

"Well that's just great..."

"So yeah," he continued quickly, "up ya get now, come on. Let's go."

"Was I unconscious?" I said uncertainly.

He didn't answer. Simply walked out of the door. Amazingly, we'd landed upright. I got gingerly to my feet and limped outside into the snow. We'd come down all right. I looked behind us - on the cliff face were big dents in the snow, where the Tardis had face-planted on it's way down. I looked all the way up and laughed. The mountain was white with snow. But the very top now wasn't. It was a grey-black colour, the colour of the stone and soil beneath. We'd blown off all the snow. Thankfully, however, no avalanche as such. It had all rolled down gently and most of it had settled on the cliff face as it came down.

The Doctor chuckled. "Yup. It'll snow hard overnight, will look good as new tomorrow."

I nodded and looked the other way. There, ahead of us now and not below, was the cave entrance, a jagged slash in the stone face of another mountain half a mile away. Was it my imagination, or could I smell something nasty, even at this distance?

"This is the place all right," the Doctor said, handing my a nose-peg. I stared at him.

"Don't want a repeat o' last time, Lynsey." He said firmly. "Rose is in there. She's not in her right mind o' course. But I still think she'll feel alone. And afraid. And I can't bear to think of her like that. Not for one moment. Can you?"

"No." I agreed, putting the nose-peg on.

"Exactly. So I can't be 'aving you retchin' every few minutes. I need you on the ball."

"Sure, sure," I agreed. "I'm ready."

The Doctor smiled and took my hand again. "I know you are. I know I've said it before, Lynsey, but I'm so glad I met you. I really am."

I smiled and shook his hand playfully. To my horror, I felt tears burn my eyes, and I looked down at the snow at once. "You feel the same?" He asked.

"Oh sure," I said in a half laughing, half choked voice, "since we met, I've been mutilated, taken into a room full of puke, chased down by savages and rolled down a hill. What's not to like?"

"That's the spirit!" The Doctor beamed, and we burst into nervous, rapturous laughter. As we walked towards the cave, I spoke to him again.

"Your worth the pain," I said, "and the monsters. I know you don't believe that. But you are."

Now it was his turn to go bleary eyed. In a quiet voice, quite unlike his normal one, he replied "say that to me again once we save her. Then I might half-believe ya."

"Fair deal," I replied. And hand in hand, Dimension Traps in pockets, we walked towards the cave.

Towards the lair of the Whispering.

Towards, oh we so desparatley hoped, an alive and well Rose Tyler.

* * *

 ** _The Doctor's Diary, Entry 1967 Part 1_**

* * *

 _Ever watched cheese rolling?_

 _Cos I have. It's hilarious. I once sat in me room (yes, course I've got a room) binge watching it for about twelve hours. If you don't know what it is, let me sum it up; a large, round cheese is rolled down a hill (still in it's pack). A group of idiots then charge down the hill after it. Bear in mind that this hill is both steep and muddy. They fall badly, they injure themselves. But they carry on. They throw themselves down this big hill, each desperate to get to the bottom first, whatever the cost._

 _The winner gets the cheese. I'm honestly not making this up._

 _We engaged in a similar sport when he arrived on Yaed. Tardis rolling can be the provisional name for now, til I think of a better one. It was ever so much fun. But we didn't win a cheese when we got to the bottom first (we were the only competitors, so thus the only possible winners). No, our prize was a nice trip into an unknown and presumably highly dangerous cave, the Whispering's new pad._

 _I'd have sooner taken the cheese._


	17. The Third Adventure II

And finally, we found her...

* * *

 ** _The Third Adventure Part 2_**

* * *

"I can't," the Doctor groaned as we squeezed through the cave entrance - my worst fears were at once confirmed, and the tunnel through the mountain _did_ get narrower the further you went. I looked ahead (the way lit by a headlamp on my head) and could tell that I'd fit through, just. There was a few meters of narrow tunnel, with grey-brown stone pushing against our sides, inches above our heads. Nevertheless, I was small. I'd fit.

The Doctor was a large man. He'd gone in after me, suspecting this situation would occur, and it was quickly apparent that it was hopeless for him to even try. He was wedged against two walls of rock, with the top of his head grating uncomfortably against the ceiling of the tunnel. Whilst he could still move, he'd end up stuck fast if he carried on.

He looked at me, an apologetic expression on his face. "I'm stuck," he barked.

 _Well Duh._

"Yeah," I said softly. "But I'm not..."

The Doctor took a shaky breath. "I'll have to look for another way in. If there is one. But you..."

"It's fine," I whispered, lying through my teeth, "I'll go on. See if I can't catch it a second time." My voice was high and squeaky, my nose blocked off by the nosepeg.

The Doctor grinned at me with watery eyes. "Rose..." he began.

"We'll get her." I said firmly. "And if the only way to get her is to kill that thing, you know I won't hesitate. Not for one moment."

"I know." The Doctor said proudly. "I know you won't. I'll be as quick as I can..."

"Sure." I said. "Good luck."

"You too." He replied, and backed out of the tunnel.

Leaving only me. I shut my eyes for a couple of seconds and took a deep breath, before pressing on. Even though I would fit, it wasn't going to be comfortable. I suddenly had hideous visions of getting trapped in here, getting stuck fast between the stone walls, unable to go forwards or back. What would happen to me then? I'd be easy dinner for the Whispering. Or what if something happened to the Doctor out there, and I ended up simply being stuck here alone, starving to death...I shuddered, every cell of my brain screaming at me to retreat, but every muscle of my body ignoring them, pressing on and on, further into the cave. My nose peg wasn't _quite_ disguising the smell.

"Rose!" I called out, listening to the echo of my voice bouncing around the cave further on. Clearly it was about to widen out...I hoped. " _Rooosee_!" I screamed again, forcing myself through the tunnel...up ahead I could hear the gentle dripping of water, and the echo of my own footsteps as I walked on, buried alive inside a mountain.

And then, just like that, I saw her. Rose. She was standing with her face to the wall up ahead; the tunnel widened out into a cavern, the ceiling dripping with long, needle like stalactites, droplets of water dribbling off the nibs and into the floor, itself littered with clusters of stalagmites, which jutted up in vicious pins of stone, razor sharp and brown like some hideous animal teeth. And there she was, in the far side of the opening! Not speaking, not moving. Just standing there, looking intently at the cave wall...

"Rose!" I exclaimed again, squeezing myself through quickly - too quickly - the cave walls pulled my sleeves back as I passed, and my bare arms were grazed on the rough stone. But I didn't stop. With a final burst of effort, I forced myself out of the narrow pathway and into the cave.

I ripped the nosepeg off and rushed over to Rose, dodging the needle-like rocks and rested a hand on her shoulder. "It's me! Rose...Rose?" I ignored the smell which hung about the cave. Tried to.

For a moment, she ignored me, and continued to gaze resolutely at the wall. Then slowly, ever so slowly, she turned round. I looked at her, and she at me, with two glazed, distant eyes. She shook my hand from her shoulder and brushed past me, staring still into the darkness.

"Come on, babes," I breathed desparatley, "it's okay. We're here for ya."

Rose turned back to me with a puzzled expression on her face.

"You _know_ me!" I said, "It's me, and the Doctor's just topside! What's it done to you?"

Rose continued to look at me, her eyes glazed. "Lynsey." She finally said, in a barely audible voice.

"Yeah!" I said encouragingly, taking a step towards her. "You still there, Rosie? Do you understand where we are?"

Rose once again took a moment to respond. "Don't you get it?" She said softly, "don't you see? Please, tell me you see..."

"See?" I spluttered, taking her hand in mine. She didn't pull away. "See what? What do you mean see?"

"Me. I'm the ally. I serve, I protect...you've been fighting it. You oughtn't to. It wants to help us..."

"Help us?" I exclaimed, suddenly very anxious about the Whispering's absence - though I hadn't seen nor heard it, there was no mistaking that smell. It was close. "How? By killing? How is _that_ helping us? Rose, your being used as it's bloody life insurance! It's got you, babes...come with me!"

"I knew you wouldn't," Rose said sadly, "I knew you couldn't see like I do...it showed me everything! Everything! Not just the universe, but all that lay beyond..."

"It's possessed you!" I moaned, shaking her shoulder roughly, "but I know your in there. I know it, Rose! Come on! You know this ain't right. It's got you locked down here like a prisoner, and-"

"Not down here." Rose corrected me, her voice not changing from that quiet, calm whisper.

"Eh?"

"Not _down_ here. _Up_ here. And what will you see? Which face?" Rose grinned. It was a hideous leer, her eyes staring blankly over my shoulder whilst her mouth stretched wide, wider than I'd ever seen her smile before. She looked down at the ground, and up at me. "What will you see, Lynsey? The child? The crab monster? Or who knows, will you even open your mind, and see what it _really_ looks like? Like I did? I know what it is, and it's all that there is to know..."

I understood just in time, and threw myself clear of the ground, edging into a little gap behind the pointy rocks on the ground. With an ear-cracking crash, the ground upon which I'd just been standing exploded - it didn't just crack, it _flew_ apart. Rose stepped back calmly, as if witnessing nothing more interesting than a piece of reality television. I watched a stone smack her in the face, blood welling from a wound in her cheek. She cared not a bit; she didn't even flinch.

All at once, the smell of the Whispering increased a hundredfold. Beneath the ground was more of the yellowy goo like that which I'd seen back on Ravrock. A shape, a huge shape, shot up from the ground, twisting and whirling in the air. I tried to look, but once again felt the pierce of a headache between my temples, nausea cramping my stomach. My eyes watered and stung as I looked at the shape. It was real, flesh and blood like I was. I thought that I almost understood what I was seeing, almost grasped something recognizable, something I could relate to - but each time I almost understood, the pains in my head would increase, and my eyes would slide out of focus. I was an eighties computer, and someone was trying to run a twenty-first century console game on me - I couldn't comprehend it, couldn't contemplate it. It was making me crash and freeze, frying my hard-drive and my memory, turning me into a helpless husk like Rose, destroying my mind so utterly that in that moment I realized-

Then it stopped, and I forgot again. Kneeling on the floor like a sprung trap was the small boy in the brown coat and flat cap hat. He was gazing at me, his eyes twinkling. His hands were tipped not with fingernails, but with needle sharp brown claws. He smiled, and his teeth were the stalagmites and stalactites, rows of razor sharp brown things jutting out of his mouth.

I pulled the Dimension Trap from my pocket and scrambled to prime it, but it was far too late. The Whispering shot forward like lightning, smashing into me and knocking it from my hand. It grabbed my neck and started for force my head down slowly, delibaratley slowly, towards the jutting needle-like rocks on the floor. I could feel it's rancid breath on the back of my neck, and tried desparatley to use the Dimension Trap which was in my hand. But now another arm shot to my hand and knocked the Dimension Trap clean away, across the floor and down into the exposed nest. In the corner, Rose watched impassively.

I sobbed as my right temple came into contact with one of the needles. Again, slowly and gently the Whispering pushed down, and I felt the point digging into my skin, pressing against my skull. I flailed around helplessly, my fists flying through the air, making contact with the monster, but doing nothing to hurt it. I was aware that it wasn't the child behind me any longer. It was a larger shape, and one that made no sense out of the corner of my eye.

"Doctor!" I screamed, as Rose turned back to face the wall. I wondered in that moment if she was beyond help; how strong must the hypnosis be to make her like this? The thought sent a torrent of anger flooding through my veins, and in a burst of strength that the Whispering hadn't expected, I lurched upwards, flinging it aside. I knew only too well that it had the strength of a thousand people, yet it hadn't been using it. It had enjoyed taunting me instead. Big mistake. I primed the Dimension Trap and I threw it at the creature, which had once again resumed the form of the child. But no sooner had the bomb landed by it's feet, it transformed a hand into a lobster-like pincer, crushing the little metal ball as if it were nothing more than a hollow ping-pong ball. It growled and lurched at me.

"Come at me again, you would?" It said in the child's lisping sing-song voice. "Fight me again? Shilly shilly little Lynshey!" It squealed with laughter and transformed it's other arm into a pincer. It sliced through the air, slamming it's pincers at the ground by my feet. I leapt back - should either of those land on my feet, it would have crippled me.

"I'm sorry," I gasped, looking again at Rose, who gazed only at the wall. "So sorry." I stumbled back towards the entrance and squeezed into the narrow tunnel. The Whispering followed; it's little form made it easy work. I squeezed and pushed through, cutting and grazing myself anew. The Whispering was in no hurry. It followed me slowly, not even touching the rough stone walls. That grin stayed on it's face, the teeth shrinking back to normal.

 _"Hey fatty boom-boom,"_ it exclaimed, watching my force my small, yet still too large, frame through the narrow gap in the mountain, _"sweet sugar dumpling."_ It had adjusted it's voice to that of a young man, and the singing voice was gentle and pleasant.

Up ahead, daylight. The ice and snow swirled peacefully, the cool, yet amazingly nor cold air touching me softly. I threw myself clear, and out onto the soft snowy floor. The Whispering strolled casually outside, looking down at me with an expression which hovered between pity and disgust.

"Tell your friend that I am the last of my kind." It instructed in an unfamiliar, older voice. This form was one I hadn't seen before, and not one which I recognized. It was an old man with long, white hair, a dark coat and a beige waistcoat. He held the lapels of that coat, and was looking down on me sternly. "Tell him that I know him to be the last of his. I've seen his past, I know who he is. And tell him, above all else, that there are two options; we both live, or we both die. Two genocides or none. I will return again to Locus Heights, Women Wept. He can come, or he can not. The choice is his."

And then it melted away into that indistinguishable shape. I didn't even bother looking this time. It sped back into the tunnel. With a whipping sound, a tail of some sort flew out at struck the roof of the passage, caving it in.

Blocking our way back for Rose.

I lay on the snow, panting heavily, rubbing the spot on my head which he'd pressed against the sharp rock. Not for the first time since arriving on Yaed, I think I blacked out. Because suddenly, the sun in the sky was in a different spot, and the man with the white hair stood above me again.

"Well?" He demanded.

I scrambled to my feet, thinking the Whispering was back. It wasn't. I blinked and instead of that, the Doctor stood there, watching me with a look of mild concern on his face.

"Gone," I whimpered. The Doctor exhaled in fury and turned away from me.

"I tried!" I protested.

"I know ya did," he said shortly, "I were wrong to send you in there alone...that's all. Shoulda been together, or not at all. It wouldn't 'ave gotten away if I'd been there."

"Bully for you," I spat, feeling hurt, "I did my best. And I know where it's gone."

"You do?" The Doctor said, the grumpiness evaporating at once, "how?"

"It told me," I said, "It's at a place called Locus Heights. It said to me that...that it's the last of it's kind...and that if you stop following, it'll leave you alone."

"Not 'appening." The Doctor said. I noticed a strange expression on his face. "Especially not if that's where it's going."

"What's Locus Heights?"

"That," the Doctor said solemnly, grabbing my hand, "is the most densely populated city this side of the universe. Understand the implications o' that?"

"It was there once before, wasn't it?" I said softly. "Before the shop? That's where you chased it from."

"I repeat," the Doctor replied, "do you understand the implications of it being there? Do you understand what happened before? And what could now happen again, if it goes back there?"

I did. And we ran back to the Tardis, hand in hand.

Onto Locus Heights. On the planet of Women Wept.

And I knew as we went, I think - I don't know how I knew, I don't know why - but I knew somehow that this would be the final stand. However things turned out.

* * *

 ** _The Doctor's Diary, Entry 1967 Part 2_**

* * *

 _I regret getting angry with her. Wasn't her fault, was it? I know she tried her best._

 _I blame myself. What was I thinking? Letting her go in there to get it? How can I think of putting her in that sort of danger, and then have the bloody cheek to get stroppy when, surprise surprise, things don't go so good?_

 _I walked all around the mountain looking for another way in. No luck. Meanwhile, my best friend was trapped in there getting tortured, yes tortured by that monster._

 _I swear it now - enough. No more. I'm going to Locus Heights. Always wanted to visit that place, but I'd have hoped it would be under better circumstances. But needs must._

 _And after this is over, me and her will stay and see the sights, if she wants. I've always wanted to go for a walk on the frozen sea. I'll bring me mittens._


	18. INTERVAL - Lynsey At Twenty-Two: Home

I was twenty-two, going on twenty-three, when I saw my mother for the final time. A lot happened in my life between my last, drunken meeting with Elijah Spellman, also known as the Pied Piper, also known as Oddbob the Clown. A lot changed.

I'd been a alcoholic, or nearly that. Such was my desperation for booze that I'd hit the town alone, get drunk by myself and drown my sorrows each night with at least two cans of lager. But I was a different person entirely four years later. No one thing had led me to change my life. Just a load of factors, over the years, which made me realize how horrible life had become. To recap - I was...well, you know, roughly twenty when I began to get serious about turning my life around. Twenty-one when, with the help of the council, I'd found that job in the supermarket, and finally moved away from my mother, and in with Steph.

I remember that day so well. It was shortly before my twenty-third birthday, and a month or two before the death of Nick Turner. I'd received a call late at night from a neighbour of my mother's - apparently she'd been up half the night, partying hard and keeping half the estate awake. Whilst it wasn't strictly my problem any longer, I promised the neighbour I'd have a word about it.

I had no idea things would turn out how they did that day.

* * *

 ** _2018, Lynsey Perron at twenty-two_**

* * *

I walked along the pavement towards my old home, a familiar, downtrodden feeling sweeping over me as I walked those old, familiar streets. How often had I staggered down them, drunk, high or both? I didn't like being back. Although part of me felt slightly proud to be walking these old haunts as a reformed woman, a larger part of me felt anxious - for the first time in a long time, I found myself craving a drink that day - I was worried that if I stayed too long, that temptation would only increase.

So I'd left home at twenty-one, a year before - and in that time, I'd only texted and phoned my mother, save a couple of dismally uncomfortable meetings at nearby coffee shops. I hadn't set foot in this area in all that time, however. This was the first time in a year, yet it felt horribly as if I'd never been away.

I wouldn't have come for anybody else, but the neighbour who'd phoned me to complain was somebody rather special to me. Her name was Jeanne Anne Plodd. In those vague, far-off memories of my early childhood, she had already been old. Now that I was all grown up, she was _very_ old. Probably well into her nineties. Her husband was long gone, and had been even back then, and she had only one child, a son who lived in Australia. His name she would often tell me to make me laugh; upon marrying a "Plodd", and falling pregnant with a child, a boy, she'd cleverly named him "Paul Christopher Plodd." P.C. Plodd. That used to make my two-to-seven year old Noddy fanatic's self laugh, although I always reminded Jeanne that PC Plod had only one "D" in his name, whilst she and her son had two.

I spent a lot of time with Jeanne. She often fed me as a child when my mother was too drunk or lazy to do so. If ever mother dearest failed to lay out an evening meal, I'd simply pop around to Jeanne's, where I'd _always_ be given a dinner, usually of soup and crusty bread, but sometimes two boiled eggs (always hard boiled) with "soldiers" (toast cut into narrow strips). Jeanne ate only plain food, on account of her poor digestive system, but it had always seemed delicious to me, a child who's diet at home consisted of takeaways or microwave meals if I were lucky, nothing at all if I wasn't. My mum was unpredictable, as I've said. Loving one minute, abusive the next. Same with food. Some nights she'd get a big greasy banquet in from the chip shop, other times she'd spend her entire housing benefit on alcohol. I don't think she even knew I went to Jeanne's for food, nor would she have cared. As long as I was out of the flat, I was somebody else's problem. That, she had told me several times as a child.

And it was for her that I went home that day. I hadn't seen her in a long time, though I always sent her a Christmas card and a birthday card, and she me. The mysterious P.C. Plodd, whom I never met, loved his mother well enough, and sent her money every four months, though she insisted he didn't need to. He came home to see her at least three times each year, sometimes four. But at the end of the day, he was on the other side of the world. If trouble ever arose for her, there wasn't always much he could do. He worked as a lawyer in Australia, and his second son, Jeanne's grandson, had severe non-verbal autism. He needed his dad, and trips back home to see Jeanne usually needed to be planned months in advance.

So when something like this arose, although it never had before, I was glad to be of service for Jeanne. I was irritated. Yes. I was blinking irritated, to put it in the politest terms. The woman was ancient! Weak, and alone. And my idiot of a mum thought it appropriate to keep her up half the night with her raves? Well no - not on my watch, mummy dearest. Not a bit of it.

As I approached the block of flats in which I'd used to live (six floors high, four flats to a floor), which was flanked either side by two other, identical blocks, a sure and certain thought began to emerge in my head, a thought which had been sitting in there, tucked away, ever since I'd gotten the call from Jeanne, exhausted and tearful, to plead with me to sort mum out.

That thought got only stronger as I approached the door to the block. As I pulled it open (there was an intercom system, but as usual, the door wasn't locked), it positively exploded in my head, overpowering me, and causing me to stop, stock still, in the entrance of the block. I looked around; there it all was. The graffiti-adorned beige stone walls, the plastic carpet, the two, terrifying lifts and the smell of urine, cig-smoke and booze. It was a thought which I felt horrible for having, but one of which I could no more dismiss than I could detach my own limbs. One should never feel that way about their mother, but I just couldn't help it.

 _I don't want to see her. I hate her. I love her too, and I always will. But I still hate her._

But I loved Jeanne as a child, and I loved her now as an adult. I wouldn't have come if I hadn't. So up I went, to the fourth floor. I took the stairs, not the lift. The lifts scared me when and scare me now. They always, I remember, sank a little when you stepped into them. They creaked and rattled when they moved, and they were just that bit _too_ small. They didn't have double doors like most lifts, but solid sliding doors that would always slam shut rather hard. Often, those lifts would either stop short of the floor, or overshoot. You'd have to step up or step down when the doors opened, as the floor of the lift car was rarely even with the floor outside. Sometimes, the doors would open before the bloody things had even stopped moving.

So I took the stairs, my knees aching slightly by the time I'd reached the right floor. I'm not going to waste anyone's time describing the state of the place. Neglected, dirty and dank. That sums it up. When Jeanne had moved here, so long ago, it had been a good place. Now it wasn't, but still she was stuck here. When I was a teen, I once asked her why she didn't get the heck out of the place, maybe to Australia with Plodd Junior and her grandkids. She wouldn't hear of it. She was all about Britain. She'd been born here to two French parents, and had lived in Britain ever since. She was very patriotic about the country, and often voiced her dismay that fewer people seemed proud to be British these days. As far as she was concerned, Britain was where she was born and absolutely where she was going to die. I admired her principles, I guess. But I still didn't think it wise for an old lady to be living alone in a cesspit like this. The estate, I mean. Not the country. The good ole' UK ain't half bad really...certainly I wouldn't have been able to pull my life back but for the help I got from the powers that be.

And there it was - 4B. My old home. More than ever I wanted to turn around and flee, to leave and not to look back, to message my mother only occasionally and to see her even less. And certainly to never come back here. I stood outside the door.

 _I won't knock_ I thought to myself, _I'll just leave._

I knocked.

As I stood there, rooted to the spot, furious with myself for knocking, I heard someone scuffing around just behind the door. There was a peephole, and I knew I was almost certainly being watched. I smiled reluctantly at it, hoping that perhaps _she_ wouldn't want to see _me_ , wouldn't let me in. How easy would that make things? I could even say I tried that way...

But of course it didn't happen that way. The door flew open, and I was greeted by a ghastly sight; my old mum, large as life and twice as ugly! She wore a scraggy dress and heels, her frame stick-thin and wispy, her skin prematurely old and her hair, brown like mine, wild. One look, heck, one smell, told me all I needed to know - she was quite drunk.

"My Lynsey! Come home to see her ole' mummy!" She slurred, wrapping her arms around me. I patted her gently on the arm.

"Yeah, right," I said, "mind if I come in?"

"Why would I mind?" She warbled, half-pulling me through the door. "Come right in!"

 _Said the spider to the fly._

I walked in and felt dizzy. It was all the same! Messy, dirty, cramped...the hallway was full of dirty laundry and cigarette ends, as was the living room. My old bedroom was also a mess - I guess that she'd had guests stay over after a party or something like that. Hadn't bothered clearing up, of course. The living room and kitchen was the worse - a duvet was sprawled over the low, sagging couch, and the television was at a funny angle, facing the window. The kitchen, I cannot begin to describe. The floor was splattered with old food, the sink piled high with plates. A kebab lay on the side, half-eaten and cold, the sauce congealed and the meat dry and plastic-like. Bottles of whiskey sat about the room, with four two-litre bottles of Pepsi on the floor, resting against the wall. Mixers. Mother's bedroom door and the box-room's door was shut, as was the bathroom door (thank goodness). The living room door didn't close. In fact, it wasn't so much as door these days as a loose piece of broken wood which hung from two rusted hinges in the wall. One of mum's boyfriends (who, for six months, I was forced to call dad) had gotten angry one night, smashed the door and stormed out of the flat, never to be seen again.

"I ain't got nout in food-wise," mum barked, "want a tipple?"

"Rather some tea." I said distantly, sitting down uncomfortably on the arm of the sofa. All this dirt! How had I ever lived like this? Mine and Steph's flat hadn't been the cleanest, but it was spotless compared to this pigsty.

"Ain't got none." Mum snapped. "Brandy?"

"Water?"

"Sure, sure." Mother said, slightly crestfallen. She wiped a dirty mug on her dress and filled it from the tap, nearly knocking over the pile of plates as she did so. She swayed awfully when she stood, bladdered beyond belief at ten in the morning. I took it, murmuring thanks. I didn't drink from it.

"What I owe the pleasure?" She drawled, sniffing loudly and wiping her nose with a crumbly tissue.

"Cold, mummy?" I asked quietly.

"Nah, love." She replied, blowing her nose loudly. I knew it wasn't. I knew why she was sniffling, and it wasn't a cold. She certainly wasn't crying either.

"Look, ma," I began, "'ave you been hosting parties late at night recently?"

Mother, sensing that I was about to scold her, changed at once. Gone was the cheeriness, gone was the kindly, gentle woman who I used to love. "Whass it to you? You ain't livin' here any more, is ya?"

"I'm not, no," I said, "true that. But I've been 'earing that you been...well, for want o' a better word, partying hard, right?"

"Wondering where your invite was?" She said, sneering at me. "Thought you was on the straight and narrow you, livin' with Little Miss Priss down in that nice town."

"Steph," I replied, "ain't prissy. She's a normal girl from a normal family."

"She looks down on ya," mum retorted, sniffing again, her voice wobbly, "always people like 'er what look down on us, innit? Why'd you let 'er get away with it?"

"Look, ma. I got a call from someone who lives round here, right. Someone who ain't so well. You kept him up all night." I said him to throw her off the scent - if I'd said "her", mother might have guessed it was Jeanne, and just like that, I'd have made life ten times harder for the kind old woman who made sure I never went hungry, out of the kindness of her heart. I just hoped I hadn't gone and sodded up life for some poor innocent guy who lived around here. I thought not; so far as I knew, all the blokes on this estate were cut from the same cloth as mum.

She swore at me. "Ain't your business, is it? You live away. Who's been sayin' this anyhow?"

"Mind your own." I said at once. "I just wanted to come and tell you. I don't want things gettin' out of hand for you." I knew only too well how badly wrong her house parties could go.

Mother - her bloodshot brown eyes full of fury and confusion - took two steps towards me and slapped me across the face. It hurt. I screeched in pain and clapped my hand to my cheek, my eyes watering. In that moment, I was small again, and she large. I forgot I was an adult. I forgot I was larger now than she was, stronger too. All at once, the terror which I hadn't known for ages was back.

"Don't ya talk to me like tha'!" She slurred, "stuck up cow! Who'd ya think ya're? So what? Gotta nice 'ouse now, livin' with some posh tart? Ya're trash an' always will be. Git out." Her voice was barely comprehensible.

"You're making life miserable for people," I said quietly, "don't you care?"

Mother again drew her hand back to slap me again, but this time I was ready. At the last moment, I grabbed her around the wrist and wrenched her arm aside. With a _crack,_ I felt it loosen in my hand, and mother screamed. I leapt from the sofa and raced to the door, dodging past the assorted litter that lay about the flat. But I ran too fast; I felt a sharp pain at my shin and I was sent flying, sprawling to the filthy floor. I had tripped over a long empty beer keg, and mummy dearest wasted no time taking advantage of that. I screamed in agony as she trampled right over me, screaming herself and clutching her broken wrist. She raced past me and kicked open the bathroom door.

I sensed danger - she was going in there for something to hurt me with, I felt sure. Aerosols to squirt in my eyes, scissors with which to stab me, heck, I wouldn't put it past the witch to throw bleach over me. She could do all of those things, and more. She was drunk. Anything was possible. So I scrambled to my feet and rushed in there after her, determined to overpower her, to wrestle her to the floor and call her an ambulance, to prevent her hurting me, or more importantly, hurting herself further. I loved her dearly, after all.

The bathroom was a revolting specimen, full of mould and damp, stray clothing on the floor and ancient, grey-brown water in the bath. And - I almost laughed when I saw this - there was a bottle of gin on the windowsill. Course there was. But I didn't laugh, because I saw then what she was about to do with it. She seized the big bottle by the neck and, turning back to me, swung it with her good arm, swinging viciously at my face.

Again, I knocked her arm away. She was weakened by age and more so by years of addiction, disorientated by her current drunkenness. The bottle flew from her hand and landed on the floor by her feet, shattering. She wore slippers, but her legs were bare to the knees. Shards of glass flew upwards as the bottle smashed, cutting her ankles and shins, soaking her slippered feet with value supermarket gin. She fell to the floor, crying.

I stood above her, panting, my cheek still smarting. That whole side of my face had turned hot, and I felt dizzy. I reached for my mobile phone, and held it thoughtfully in my hand.

"I hate you," I told her, "but I ain't scared. Not anymore. Now you are, I know - because you're gonna die in some ditch someday soon, and we both know that when it happens, you'll be alone. Just like you are now."

I called her an ambulance. Then, ignoring her screams and vile insults, I walked out. Never did I return.

On my way out, I stopped outside Jeanne's flat...I could so easily go in and see the old girl again! Oh, how I wanted that! How I wanted to see her, and cuddle her, and reminisce about times gone by. Maybe, above all else, to finally thank her properly for all that she did for me. I stood there, and raised my hand to knock...

 _But...no. Sorry, Jeanne. Just...no._ I lowered my hand again. I didn't belong here anymore. This chapter in my life, the first chapter, my childhood, was closing now.

"Thanks," I whispered softly to the door. Then I walked away. Down the stairs, outside and onto a bus, taking me back home. Home, to a good friend, a reasonable flat and, above all else, sensible, normal life...

I never saw mother or Jeanne again, and never heard from them. But I _don't_ hate mother. I never wish to see her again, I don't care what becomes of her...but I'll always love her, because somewhere deep inside, I know she'll always love me.

You see, I fully expected to have the police come calling after that encounter. I fully expected her to tell the police that it had been me who's broken her arm and wounded her with the gin bottle, even if it had been in self-defence. But I never got any such call. If they asked, and probably they did, she didn't tell them what had happened. She could have ruined my newly on-track life for me quite easily after that day. And she didn't.

For that, though I will _never_ like her, I will _always_ love her.

* * *

 ** _The Doctor's Diary, Entry 1968_**

* * *

 _I'm making something._

 _Special glasses for my little human chum - the fact she can't look at it in it's natural form has so far given it the upper hand, I think. An advantage, anyway. Well no more. What they'll do, in effect, is protect her diddy little human brain whenever she looks at it, by blocking out the true form and replacing it with something her mind can comprehend, something_ _as close_ _to the true form as possible, but not the true form really._

 _I might wear the spare pair I've made - maybe I, with my magnificent brain, will actually be able to see the real thing that way...or maybe not. It's very powerful._ _I think...and I might be wrong, but I think...that it comes from a reality in which only sound exists. That's my personal opinion. I think it's a creature of sound, a creature with no physical self when it's residing in it's own universe. A sonic creature, you might say. But a creature which adapted to three dimensions, creating a physical form for itself, when it arrived here._

 _If we capture (and kill) the physical form, which exists here in our universe, do we kill the creature itself? Or is the physical being which exists here simply a limb? An arm, reaching out into our reality for food, whilst the creature itself remains tucked away in it's universe of sound, getting fat off the food which the physical arm brings back? As to that, I don't know. I kind of hope that killing the physical creature won't kill the entity itself. I think maybe not. I'd like to think we're on a mission to banish it, as opposed to a mission to kill it._

 _But even if killing the physical arm will send a shock wave through the dimensions which kills the monster beyond, I'll not lose too much sleep. This has to be done. It's not pleasant, it's not nice. It's about standing up and making a decision. Because, as ever, nobody else will._

 _We have one objective, and one objective only - to catch it. Once it's in the Dimension Trap, it's game over. It can't ever escape from one of those beauties. It's a scientific impossibility._

 _And I'm terrified of what we'll find when we get to Locus Heights. I'm not scared of the Whispering, and never have been. It has no hold over me. I'm scared of what it will have done, what we'll find when we get to that big, busy city._


	19. The Fourth Adventure I : Locus Heights

Have you ever felt...disconnected? Have you ever felt like a viewer, watching of the events as they unfold around you? Like a passenger, being taken down a path of pre-decided events, events which you can't control yet can't escape?

My name is Lynsey Perron, and this is my story...and sometimes, just lately, I wonder if I'm not going mad. I've travelled with the Doctor and Rose for...well, I can't quite remember...a while. I think. But sometimes it feels like no time at all. Sometimes it's as if seconds have passed, and I'm rushing through a movie, playing the game, yet never quite touching the sides. And I can't do it anymore. I know where I am, and I know where I'm going...yet why, when I close my eyes, am I sometimes just _there_ , as though no time has passed?

Am I real? What is real? And where are we going next?

* * *

 _ **The Fourth Adventure: Locus Heights**_

* * *

"Woah!" I screamed, as a missile smashed into the deserted pavement in front of me. The Doctor and myself leapt back from the blast, the heat prickling our skin, setting our teeth on edge. We ducked around the corner, hiding behind the cover of a grocery shop which, at better times, sold all manner of exotic fruit.

The city was a mess; all around, civilians were screaming and running for the hills of the surrounding deserts. And such was the swollen population of Locus Heights, people were even dying in the scrum to escape. The heat of the planet was extreme, though the Doctor told me on the way that Women Wept was mostly a very cold planet. Only here, in the heat of the great desert of Women Wept, did people live. In peace, until today.

It was very much like a city in the middle east might be, though I can't claim ever to have travelled there. It wasn't unlike, I supposed, Dubai, which I'd only ever seen in pictures or on television. Around us were great, modern skyscrapers of all shapes and sizes, some made of glass and other's polished metal. Dotted about the streets where luxury cars of every colour and of fantastic, alien design. Cars with round roofs and ten tiny wheels, cars that floated, cars which ran on caterpillars. Plenty had been destroyed now by the missiles that were raining down on the city, as had a lot of the structures which towered above us. But as well as the modern effects, the city had real signs of some ancient culture. Rustic stone buildings and statues of strange creatures. Decorative fountains and ancient museums. They, like their newer neighboring buildings, were being destroyed chunk by chunk, piece by piece. Of a population of twelve hundred million, I shuddered to think how many were dead, and how many were going to be. Though plenty had gotten away, more to follow, I knew that just as many would not.

We were among those who were running. But we were not running away from the danger. Oh no. We were running full pelt towards it.

A soldier was with us, a man who I can't describe, on account of the full-face metal helmet he wore. Certainly he was large, but that's all I knew. He wore a combat outfit with desert camouflage, and a tight fitting armour vest over his top. This vest was jet-black, with pieces of metal integrated into the bodywork. Heavy duty body armour. Similar armour was wrapped around his legs, separate pieces above and below the knees, and he had two shoulder pads which were all metal. His arms too were strapped with this armour. He was, I imagined, almost bullet-proof. He could probably take a fair few shots before going down, and I supposed his role was to lead a charge, to draw the fire of the enemy, providing cover for his less armored, and more mobile team. In his hands he cradled a rifle of a strange design. It was blue-grey, small, and had multiple attachments stuck on, among them a suppressor and some hideous looking chute under the barrel, which I presumed shot explosives. Contrary to what I expected, the gun fired bullets, as did the guns of the other soldiers around us. I'd been expecting lasers.

We were heading towards the town's secret military base. Except it wasn't such a secret any more, nor did it appear to be the property of the military at this moment in time. Someone had gotten in, and hacked into what should have been the ground-to-air missile system, which was there to protect the city if ever it came under attack from the sky, shooting down any warships or invading forces which might arrive. But now someone had reprogrammed the system. Gone was the ground-to-air operation. Instead, when fired from huge turrets in the buildings roof, the missiles would rise only briefly, before falling back to the ground, smashing into the very city they were supposed to protect, killing the citizens who's lives they existed to save. Someone was in there, turning the city's own weapons against it.

Not _someone_ , me and the Doctor knew. _Something_. The Whispering had materialized inside there and was butchering the city. In effect...preparing itself dinner.

"The creature behind this," the Doctor yelled to the soldier, shouting to be heard above the explosions, "can't be damaged by yer guns. Only me and me mate here can stop it, but we'll need ya help to get in there."

"You'll have all the help you need," the soldier screamed back, "on my go, we'll push up."

The Doctor had shown him his psychic paper, which identified the pair of us as high-ranking officers in the planet's military. Hence the total obedience of the soldiers.

"A friend of ours," the Doctor continued, "is in there, being used as an hostage. She ain't to be harmed, you understand? I want that girl outta there in one piece."

"We'll do all we can." the soldier screamed, as to our right, a building took a direct hit and collapsed instantly, bricks flying apart. We pressed ourselves up against the wall of the grocery as the road next to us was showered with debris. Thick, gritty dust filled the air, making me cough, turning my eyes red and watery. If anyone had been in that building, perhaps hiding under a table or a bed, hoping beyond hope that it would stop, they'd almost certainly have just died.

"Move out!" the soldier bellowed gesturing for his men to head up the street, towards the military base, which although only two minutes walk, would be a disgustingly hazardous journey. Certainly some, most or all of us would die trying to reach the base. The soldier (only now did I see his name, Captain Tirwyl, on the breast of his uniform) moved out in front, whilst me and the Doctor followed behind. We both wore small, silver glasses, which he told me would _nearly_ give us a view of the Whispering's true form, protecting our minds against the feedback of what we saw. Despite the terror and the desperation of the situation, that excited me. Finally seeing what it really was, or _nearly_ seeing what it was.

We rushed down the street, taking cover behind a yellow-green little sports car with a rounded roof and a huge bonnet, which obviously concealed an obnoxiously powerful engine. There was a large crack in the windshield, where a piece of stray debris had struck, most likely from the block of flats above, which had taken at least four hits.

All counted, there were thirteen of us. Me, the Doctor, Captain Tirwyl and ten men. That was about to change, for the worse. As the Captain signaled again for us to move up, the first four soldiers were hit. They'd been using the apartment block for cover, but no sooner had they moved out into the open, turning left at a T-junction, they were killed. Not by a missile. Instead, explosions of blood erupted from them, and they shook and spasmed violently where they stood, before collapsing, lifeless, to the concrete. Blood pooled around them. Tirwyl swore and peered out from cover. He looked quickly, and ducked back behind the car. He turned to me and the Doctor.

"Machine gun," he said. His voice was cracked, and I wondered if he wasn't crying underneath that helmet. He'd just lost four men. "Automatic turrets, but they're all run off the same system as the missiles."

The Doctor nodded, and pulled out his sonic screwdriver. "Will that armour keep ya alive?" He asked Tirwyl.

Tirwyl nodded. "If I'm very quick."

"Then take this," the Doctor said, passing him the screwdriver. "Point and think. It'll disable the turrets from a range of thirty feet."

The soldier nodded. "I think I can get that close before it shoots through the plating. But if I don't, then I'm counting on you to bloody well save this city. You get me?"

"We will," I told him solemnly, my mouth dry, "good luck."

Without hesitating, he leapt from behind the car, and out to the left, past the block of flats where his men were hiding in cover. I watched in horror as rounds, dozens of them, smashed into him, sending sparks flying as they hit his armour. He clenched his arms together in pain, but carried on moving forwards. The bullets made earsplitting _tuk!_ noises as they smashed into him, metal rounds hitting the combined metal and Kevlar of his armour, hurting him, but not killing him. Not yet. But nothing stays bulletproof forever. And he still had halfway to go before he reached the thirty foot radius. I saw one shot go bouncing off his helmet, and he finally lost his cool and broke into a haphazard, clumsy run, slowed by the weight of his body armour.

But he made it. His right arm shot out, the sonic screwdriver in his hand, and I watched in relief as the turret shut down instantly, smoke billowing from the inside of the mounted machine gun. My relief was short lived; behind us, a missile slammed into the street. Not out of the woods yet, I reminded myself sternly. As one, me, the Doctor, and the six remaining soldiers moved out to join the Captain by the disabled turret. The front of his armour was mush. Pieces of fabric and bands of metal hung loosely from it, and it was awash with holes, some still smoking. With a grunt, and with the help of two of his men, he ripped is from his torso. His chest and stomach were bleeding - red blots dotted the front of his desert camouflage top. But they were small wounds. The bullets were still in the armour, which he promptly threw on the floor. They'd made a little impact on him, but only a little. Flesh wounds. The armour was destroyed, rather than the man wearing it. There was a scratch mark on his helmet.

He tossed the screwdriver to the Doctor. "I'm good," he said, a notable wheeze in his voice, "let's press."

"Right." The Doctor said, and it was then that I realized incredulously that the Doctor was, on some deep level, enjoying this. Not the death and destruction. He hated those things, I knew, and he always would. But the battle-ground. The feeling of adrenaline rushing through his blood as bullets and missiles came cracking towards him. I knew only a little of his past, but I knew he'd fought. I knew he'd fought in a war more hideous than anything I could ever imagine. And I knew he regretted it. But I wondered then if there wasn't more of the soldier left in him than he cared to admit.

He grabbed my hand and we sprinted down the street, past the turret. We had a shopping mall to go through, and then we'd be face to face with the military base...

* * *

And then we were there. I juddered to a halt and looked around in confusion. We were standing before a large tower, set up to look like a normal office block. From the roof, missiles launched, at the rate of one for every ten seconds, or thereabouts.

 _We got through the mall without incident._ I remember now.

"How do we get in?" I demanded, when the Doctor's sonic screwdriver failed to open the door. Deadlock seal.

"Ach..." he groaned, placing his hand on his chin, thinking hard.

"I know." Captain Tirwyl said, reaching into a satchel bag attached to his leg. He pulled out a grenade.

"What would have happened if that turret had hit that bag?" I demanded.

"Then I wouldn't have been a very healthy guy," Tirwyl said with a shrug, "now stand back."

"That ain't gonna help, mate!" The Doctor protested. "You'll only ruin the paintwork! That door's powerful."

"I know." Tirwyl said. He raised his arm, and suddenly, out of the armour attached to his left wrist, a length of grey rope shot out, with a vicious looking hook on the end. It pierced the concrete next to a first floor window on the base, and I watched in awe as instantly began to rise, pulled up by the rope. He came to a stop on the windowsill, held there safely (relatively speaking) by the grappling hook, embedded firmly in the building's brickwork. The windows were reinforced, impossible to kick through or even shoot through. A grenade, however, put right up against the glass...

Tirwyl primed the grenade, leaving it on the outside windowsill. In one swift movement, he detached the wire from the concrete and arranged his body so that he fell a controlled fall from the windowsill. He tucked his arms over his chest and lay flat as a board in midair, coming to a hard (and, no doubt, immensely painful) landing on the concrete below. His helmet, and the still intact body armour which was strapped to his back took a lot of the force of the fall, and he got to his feet, bruised but able.

The grenade went off; such was the strength of the little bomb that I felt the concrete shake beneath me. The window, indeed the concrete framework of the building around it, stood no chance. With a groaning, crumbling sound, that section of the wall fell apart, concrete blocks landing on the ground below with great, satisfying _thumps_. We were in.

"I expect you can 'ear me Rose," the Doctor called out, "and know this - we're coming for ya. I know your still in there, and I know you trust me. We're coming."

The six remaining soldiers readied their grapple hooks, but Tirwyl stopped them. "No. I'll go alone. You two," he said to two of them, "give your grappling hooks to the Doctor and his friend. Your guns too."

"No." The Doctor said firmly. "Like I said, they won't do nothin'. What's more, Captain, if your comin' then you aren't bringing your gun."

Captain Tirwyl shook his helmet-clad head. "But with respect sir..."

"With respect nothing." The Doctor said. "I get the horrible feeling that you might have to shoot my friend when we find her. And I can't let that happen."

Reluctantly, Tirwyl passed his rifle to one of his men. Three of them relinquished their grappling hooks, and I gave one each to me and the Doctor, a new one for Tirwyl. As one, we aimed our arms at the new hole in the face of the building.

"Clench your fist to fire the line." Tirwyl instructed. And, with a thrill of exhilaration, I did just that. Pointing my wrist at a wall, visible inside the building, I clenched my fist and felt a jolt as the line shot out, the hook passing just slightly too close to my clenched hand for comfort. I heard a distant noise as it hooked into the wall, and I screamed lightly as my feet left the ground and I flew, yes flew, up through the air, pulled along by the wire. I ducked my head as I went through the hole in the wall, and gasped in relief as I landed, somewhat uncomfortably, on the floor inside. I looked around and laughed. For we were in a shop. Not a big shop, like that in which I used to work. But a shop nonetheless. A little grocery store, selling the basics for the staff who lived in this once-hidden military outfit. I got clear of the wall as the Doctor and Captain Tirwyl came zooming in. At once, the Doctor leapt up. "Where's the control room?" He demanded.

"Up." Tirwyl said simply, pointing outside the entrance to the shop. A narrow spiral staircase stood there. "Level eight." Were were on level one. The Doctor, without waiting a moment, sprinted towards it. I raced to keep up, Tirwyl dragging along behind. I could hear him stripping off what remained of his body armour, which now served only to slow him down. I didn't look back and I didn't wait up.

"Rose!" I screamed, as I pounded up the stairs. Ahead of me, the Doctor was calling for her. I propped my glasses up against my head, for I could feel them slipping as I ran. Just as I ran past the entrance to level three, and further op, I heard an intercom come crackling into life.

"Welcome home..." said a woman's voice - Rose's voice.

"Rose?" I yelled, running faster up the stairs, so fast that my head started to spin. "Can you hear me?"

"Yep." Came the voice. "Nice place, your town. What's it called?"

"Rose!" I heard the Doctor's booming voice ahead of me. "You have to stop this! I know you can remember me, and I know ya don't want this. Give it up."

"Good. That's very good. Sorry, the Doc told me to check your memory."

"Listen to him! Give it up and let go!" I exclaimed. Suddenly, as I ran past level three, I found myself standing right against the Doctor's back. I'd caught up with him. He was larger than me, and less nimble.

"Let me go first," I said, forcing my way under his arm, and up the stairs ahead of him.

"Lynsey!" He screamed, scrabbling for my back, trying to prevent me rushing ahead. I shook him off and kept running.

"Just hold on, Rosie," I whimpered. At the back of my mind, I was suddenly aware of a distressing error - _I had no Dimension Trap. The Doctor had two. I had none._ Didn't matter. I had to get to Rose.

"Great stuff," came Rose's voice, "but I don't think dream's the right word. More like...freaky virtual world constructed from your memories."

I now ignored her. Speaking took energy, energy I needed to race up this stomach-turning staircase. I felt a little like I was in a whirlpool. A nasty thought came into my head - I _was_ in a whirlpool. But instead of being spun around, pulled underwater and drowned, I was being spun around, but pulled up, up towards a death just as nasty as drowning. _Up to the Whispering._ It would probably come to the same thing.

Finally, with my heart throbbing and my head spinning, I reached level eight. Below me, perhaps at level six now, I heard the Doctor. Somewhere lower than him would be Tirwyl. Backup was coming, if I could just survive a few seconds...

I pushed through the entrance to the floor, and stopped, standing stock still. Level one had been like a hospital or something- separate rooms, a little shop...but here...

It was a wide open cavern of a room. It took up the entire floor with one massive great control room. Computers lined the walls, and a screen at least four times my height hung from the wall opposite me. And up a flight of steps, standing in a circular bank of computers, a dazed look in her eye, stood Rose.

"Rose!" I screamed, leaping up the stairs and grabbing her. I had to get her away; _she_ was controlling the missiles! She was doing it's dirty work for it. And although she wasn't herself, a look deep into those cold eyes told me all I needed to see - the knowledge of what she was doing was killing her.

So I pulled her away with all my strength, the pair of us tumbling down the stairs. I felt my back shoot up in pain, and my ankle twist, but I was sure I hadn't been badly hurt. I looked at Rose. Her eyes were staring at something above me, on the ceiling.

I looked.

And what I saw made me wish that I'd never run up here alone, forget that, made me wish I'd never even come with the Doctor at all, never exposed myself to the thrills and horrors of his life. All at once, I longed for my flat, and my boring job and my ordinary life, for such was the horror of what I saw that it made me rue the day I even met him and Rose, made me rue the day they'd been so selfish as to take all that away and ask me to come, forcing me to see such utter terrors like that which I saw now, things I'd otherwise happily lived without ever having seen.

Above me, scuttling across the ceiling towards me, was the Whispering, a millipede the length of four buses, which had been curled up in the corner, where a small yellow nest was starting to form. It must have had over a thousand legs, each one the size of a person's arm, tipped with sharp little points which made hideous tapping noises on the ceiling, like rain splattering against a window, only louder. It was emitting a dry hissing noise. It's skin was jet black, it's body a cylinder of dozens of individual, solid plates of tissue which moved side to side as it scuttled. It's head was large and round, with two empty insect's eyes leering emotionlessly down at me. It's antenna moved gently on the sides of it's head, feeling the air of the room. It detached the front quarter of it's body from the ceiling and came down towards me, the remainder of it's body still attached to the ceiling. The millipede stunk, the rich revolting smell of the Whispering overpowering me.

 _It's not a millipede,_ I reminded myself. _Not really. But this isn't a disguise, this is the closest my brain can come to picturing it, as close a picture to the real thing as the glasses can form for me._

I screamed and fell to the floor, clutching Rose as the monster from beyond time and reality itself came at us. I saw it's revolting little ( _huge_ ) mouth open, I saw in the corner of my eye the Doctor burst into the room and cry my name.

And then the mouth closed over me and Rose, trapping us in humid, stinking darkness.

 _Trapping me._

 _Eating me._

 _Drowning me._

* * *

 _ **The Doctor's Diary, Entry 1969 Part 1**_

* * *

 _We got to Locus Heights too late. It's clever. If nothing else, it's clever. Rather than hide out and eat little and often, it used the city's own weapon's against them, massacring the residents. Meat galore! With the help of the local army, headed by Captain Tirwyl, we headed to the base in which it had holed up and unleashed death on the city. It was hard, dangerous work, and four of the team didn't make it. But finally, we got there._

 _My friend, she's just so...brave! I don't know how she does it. She was faster than me, and she went ahead despite my warnings. She didn't even have a Dimension Trap! That was stupid, yes. But so amazingly brave. She attempted to shut down the missile system herself. But then it came for her. I don't know what she saw it as, but I saw it as a millipede. It isn't a millipede. A millipede is just the animal in this universe which happens to be most like the Whispering's true form, so that's what we see._

 _And it_ so _nearly ate her. I got there just in time._

* * *

 **END OF CHAPTER**

* * *

 **Author's Note:** So yeah, the next chapter (twenty) will be the last of this story. Might take a few days to write, going to be a longer one. This story is indeed much shorter than Will You Come I, simply because that was a lot of companions' stories merged into one big narrative, whilst this is one story about one character (sort of). Having forty chapters for this story would end up getting boring I think, hence this is only half the length.

Answers coming in the final chapter, of course :) In the meantime, hope you all enjoy this one!


	20. The Fourth Adventure II: Me

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:UNKNOWN

* * *

 ** _The Fourth Adventure: Me_**

* * *

"Hey," said a sharp voice from somewhere above me, "still breathing?"

I opened my eyes slowly, hardly daring to believe that I was alive...above me stood the Doctor, the arm of his leather jacket scuffed, torn and dripping with slime, the same slime that was covering my entire body. I took a breath and tried to sit up - slowly. The room had been torn apart. Computers lay, smashed, on their sides across the floor, whilst a hole the size of a boulder had been punched in the big screen at the front of the room, shattering the glass and revealing the electronic spaghetti underneath. My eyes darted left and right, looking for any sign of that monster, that millipede of an impossible size, the Whispering with all it's faces thrown away.

To my left, also lying down (and, unlike me, out cold) lay Rose, herself covered in the same slime (saliva, I reminded myself with a shudder) that I was. In the corner of the room stood Tirwyl, who was attempting to operate one of the only computers left standing. The look on his face told me it was a no-go.

"Where is it?" I demanded, leaping to my feet and swaying faintly, "where's the Whispering? Did you see it? Did you-"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," the Doctor cut across me impatiently, "I saw it. You realize what it's done?"

"No," I said groggily, "on account of having been unconscious, no." Rather than sounding clever with all those big words, the sentence came out weak and slurred.

"It was gonna eat ya," the Doctor explained, "would've if I 'adn't turned up jus' then. But...ha...when it saw I had a Dimension Trap...that changed things a little. It ran. Tried ta take a bite outta me, but ran just the same."

"It's _gone_?" I exclaimed, my heart sinking all over again, "you mean it _got away_?"

"No." The Doctor said triumphantly, a grin spreading out over his face, "well, yeah. But no at the same time. Not quite. I didn't have time to throw the trap, but now I've seen it's sorta natural form, I can go one better - I can corner it good and proper. I know how to stop it teleportin' away again."

"You do?"

"I do," the Doctor said, beaming. "Now I know how big it is, I know it's limits. It's a huge advantage. But the...uh... _not so_ good news is that it's gone to...um...well, it's gone to Earth."

"What!" I shrieked, clapping my hands to my face, my stomach turning. The Doctor raised a hand to silence me.

"Forget it, Lyn. I know what we're dealing with now, and I'll make sure it can't get away next time. Once we've finished here, we'll go and get it. I promise ya."

"What d'you mean once we're "finished here" though?" I demanded. "If it's gone, their safe. Right? We gotta get back to Earth _now_."

"We got Rose back." The Doctor observed, changing the subject, and looking down at her, smiling. "She'll sleep a little, but then she'll be right as rain. That counts for somethin' right?"

"Course." I snapped. "But we've _got to go_ , Doc!"

"We can't." The Doctor replied shortly. He turned to Tirwyl. "Well?"

The Captain turned to face us and, for the first time, removed his helmet. He was black, his curly hair cut very short, a light beard dusting over his chin. He was, I was surprised to see, well over forty. Perhaps over fifty even. He'd fought and moved with the speed and agility of a man half his age. His eyes were very round, and slightly bloodshot; he'd been crying for the loss of his men. I'd suspected that earlier, I felt sure of it now. Who could blame him?

"It's finished us off," he moaned, "it has. Look at the readings."

The Doctor pointed his screwdriver at the console and grimaced. "Ouch." He said, biting his lip.

"What did we ever do to it?" Tirwyl said miserably.

"Nothin'," the Doctor replied, "it ain't done this out of revenge or spite, buddy. It's done it purely to hold us up. Flight or fight. That's what it's always come down to."

"What's it done?" I said urgently, looking down at Rose who appeared to be stirring.

"Oh, this base is powered by an ion reactor," the Doctor explained casually, "which it's sent into meltdown."

"Which is bad, right?" I whispered, my mouth dry.

The Doctor and Tirwyl nodded grimly. On the floor, Rose whimpered and made a feeble attempt to open her eyes. As I looked at her, very suddenly, _it was as though I'd been transported momentarily to another dimension; the room got darker, and the Doctor and Tirwyl, along with Rose vanished. The smashed computers vanished too, and I was alone. No - not quite - there was a window in the far corner of the room, one I hadn't noticed before. I ran towards it. And stopped - in that window was Rose, looking back at me with a frightened face._

 _I walked towards the window, and as I did, so did she...it was then that I saw the window was not a window, but a mirror, a mirror in which Rose was trapped. I made to smash it at once, and she did the same. Our fists came into contact with the glass_ and the illusion broke, catapulting me back into the here and now.

I staggered backwards and blinked. The Doctor cut off in mid-sentence and gazed at me sharply. "You okay?"

"Yeah I...zoned out I guess..."

"Nah," the Doctor said, "it's the ion reactor. It's already leaking. Frying ya brainstems, piece by piece. Hallucinations are the fun part. Get ready for dizziness, followed by crippling headaches, nosebleeds and death. Unless we sort it out right now."

"We can't. We've got to get out of Locus Heights," Tirwyl said, "we can't save the city, we can still saves uselves."

"No." The Doctor said sharply, "we can disable it by hand. Lynsey - with me. Tirwain, look after her."

"Tirwyl," he snapped, "but you can't! You'll be toast before you get within ten feet of it man!"

"You'd be, yeah. Lynsey'd be, yeah. Me? Nah. Probably not. Maybe not. I dunno, hopefully not. Anyway, Lynsey! Coming?"

"I certainly am." I said promptly, following in his wake as he made for the staircase. As we left, I heard Tirwyl speak again.

"You should let me do it." He mumbled, in a voice that he meant to sound noble and brave, but which instead sounded terrified, in case the Doctor accepted his suggestion.

"Sorry Tirwyl," the Doctor barked, not looking round, "but you m'man, are the one with something to live for. This is my job."

"Don't say that." I said to him sternly. "If you die in there, I guess it'll fall to me to turn it off. So I kinda guess you'll try not to die in that case."

"Fair play." The Doctor said grudgingly. Let's go.

* * *

And just like that, there we were, inside the reactor room, a control room smaller than the one we'd come from ( _the one we'd been standing in a split second ago!_ ) but otherwise little different. Through a heavy-duty metal door, with a thick glass window, was a giant cylinder constructed from some cold, grey metal; the reactor, I'd bet. It looked all right - no smoke, no cracks in the casing, nothing like that. But the computer bank in here was flashing red, the words CRITICAL flashing up on every screen available. Bit of a giveaway, what?

"Okay," the Doctor said, guiding me to the controls. "I need ya to hold...that one down," he placed my hand on a small black lever to the right of the console, "and press... this here button every four seconds," he said, directing my left hand to an orange button, " _every four seconds_ , Lynsey. No more, no less. Got it?"

I said that I did. The Doctor took a deep breath, and rolled up the sleeved to his jacket. "Okay," he said, "okay...now I'm gonna 'ave to open that door...it'll make you hallucinate again, but jus' for a mo."

"Right." I said, gritting my teeth.

"Whatever ya do, 'old onto that lever. You get me?"

"I hear ya, Doc. Just go for it."

He nodded. We both held our breath as he reached for the handle of the metal door. Then, quickly before he could change his mind, he wrenched it open and rushed through. But that split second in which it was open was enough; there was a ghastly _wooshing_ noise, like air escaping from an airlock, and the air in the room took on a sultry, metallic tang which made my head swim. I felt the world close up, and tightened my grip on the levers. In front of my eyes, there but not quite there, swam a gigantic millipede which peered down on me and spoke with a woman's voice, Rose's voice;

 _Why am I the baddie this time? Why? What have you done? Is it your doing? Did you ask for this! I just wanted to help you! We both did!"_

I snapped back to reality, and the millipede was gone. The Doctor was speaking to me through a radio built into the computer. "Keep me talking," he said, and I was shocked to hear how terribly hoarse his voice had already become, how terribly weak and strained. A monitor flicked into life, the big red CRITICAL sign vanishing to be replaced with a video of him in the reactor room. He was doing something on a small keypad attached to the side of the great tank.

"Easy!" I laughed encouragingly, "Easy as! Tell me a story, Doc! A good one! Focus on tellin' me it good, coz I'm a tough audience, me."

"Awright," he said weakly, "ever told ya about the Other?"

"No, no." I replied, "tell me now."

"Three...three Time Lords to start with," he whimpered, "Om...Omega who on'y built. Rassilon, on'y grew. An...and the...the Other...only ruined...an..."

He wheezed and I saw him drop to his knees.

"Keep going!" I screamed desparatley, fighting off the panic. My head had started hurting now. Really badly.

With a burst of strength the Doctor got back up and continued. "Gallifrey shoulda been...p...p...perfect," he stammered, "an' legend goes that it weren't coz of...of this Other...not real though. Not real...and..."

And he slumped down again. I burst into tears as I saw him crash to the floor, smacking his head on the metal reactor as he went. I knew he was done, that the ion energy leaking out was too toxic even for him, let alone me...

Or _did_ I know that? For even as I'd broken down, I'd noticed something change - the monitors, rather than screaming CRITICAL in red, had changed. They now (excluding the one on which I was watching the Doctor) warned sternly CAUTION in amber...

And then I understood. I understood that I needed to do, understood that actually he wasn't trying to shut it down, and hadn't been...he went in there with it CRITICAL, knowing only he could (perhaps) survive that, but that it would incapacitate him...he hadn't been trying to shut it down. Merely to lower the ion levels to CAUTION...and even as I watched now, I saw him raise a weak and shaky arm, tapping the console lightly.

My job.

But what of my current task? What if I stopped hammering this button and pinning down this lever? Would that not flood the chamber with ion power again, killing him then and there, melting me from the inside out the second I walked through that door, assuming the whole thing didn't explode and wipe out the city?

Of course not; I laughed as I understood only now that I was doing absolutely nothing out here. Fiddling with random controls, doing nothing this way or that about the reactor. My real job, the job that needed doing and that which the Time Lord himself couldn't do, was to shut the reactor down. Saving what remained of the city.

I let go of the controls, not entirely comfortably despite my near certainty that I was achieving nothing by holding them down. For one, heart-stopping moment I simply stood there, waiting. But when nothing exploded and the screens didn't move from CAUTION, I relaxed (relatively speaking, of course). And I turned to the door of the reactor room. I assumed - that is to say, I guessed - that I'd know what to do, purely because the Doctor trusted me to know. I suspected - that is to say I hoped - that it would be as simple as one button saying "purge" or "shut down" or "emergency stop" or some such lovely, final slogan which would turn the thing off. Before the leaking ion energy killed me.

As I walked to the door, I again hallucinated a little, the ion power effecting me even here, outside the reactor room. Standing at the door I saw not the Whispering, but Oddbob, Oddbob with his white face and his rainbow suit, Oddbob with his painted smile and his balloons. He leaned against the door on one arm and grinned at me with hideous teeth. When he spoke, however, it was Rose I heard for a second time.

 _It's all wrong! I'm here not there! I'm not who I am, and your not who you are!_ We're not who we are! _Let it go! Let us go! Why can't you just let me go? Maybe you can control it, maybe you can't, but you_ do _know! You understand, even if you don't realize it yet! Let me go! You can, and you will, and I know what it means, but you have to!_

"Hey, old buddy," I said to Oddbob pleasantly, ignoring his (or Rose's) cries, "this one's been long overdue." I struck out with my right fist and struck Oddbob on the chin, feeling his clammy face shudder under the force of my punch. I knew it to be a hallucination only, but who says the hallucinator can't make up the rules sometimes? I slapped him across the face, and I slammed his head against the metal door. The clown, the nightmare of my childhood, the creature which nearly took me away, who turned my friend into a monster, screamed and fled - I watched him fly from the room, out of the door and down the stairs, knowing he wasn't there, knowing that the real Oddbob (if ever he had been real) hadn't tormented me for years, but laughing triumphantly just the same as this ghostly version was sent away screaming and sobbing, his tears leaving tracks on his white face, washing the greasepaint from it.

Fun over - for now I was at the door, face to face with the cool metal...did I expect to die in there? No - I trusted the Doctor. I trusted him to keep me safe. But was I scared? Yes. For in there, through that door were two rooms moulded into one; A room containing an ion reactor which was failing, leaking ion energy which would overheat my brain, burn it out from the inside, leaving me a useless husk, eventually exploding, flattening this city and vaporizing the two people lying down next to it. But that's not even what scared me. For the room was also a room of nightmares. It would send me to hideous places, make me see hideous things, relive hideous memories, hear hideous voices like that warped version of Rose's...it could cost me my sanity, I knew...the true danger, the physical danger and hurt, didn't scare me. It was what it would do to me mentally - what I might see, what I thought I'd learn - that scared me...

It ended here. _This_. Whatever _this_ was, however _this_ had happened...it went no further. Because Rose was right. I knew. I didn't know I knew, not yet. But this was it. End of the line. This had happened before, and I knew where they were going next. Not me. _They_.

With that in mind, and sadness in my heart, I wrenched open the door to the reactor room and ran through, hearing it slam firmly shut behind me...

"Hello again," Rose said, emerging from behind the door as it closed again. I started, and wheeled around, ignoring the throb in my head, the blurry lines shooting across my vision. I thought, at first, that she wasn't there, simply a hallucination. But then she touched me on the cheek. I felt her skin against mine and stared in disbelief. "But your downstairs..." I murmured, "out cold..."

"Can't I be both?" Rose asked me innocently, "can't I be up here with you as well?"

"I hope so," I told her quietly, as my head swam, "because I can't do it with you, I don't think..."

"Hang in there." She laughed, and arm in arm, as staggered towards the reactor, headed for the control panel the Doctor had been working on. The closer we got, the worse I became, though Rose didn't seem to be effected at all. I saw Oddbob again, waving at me from the corner, balloons in hand. I looked up and the millipede was there, crawling along the ceiling. Then - in some ways worst of all - I looked behind me. I stopped and stared, for there were two women standing there. One was mother, with her hair askew and her skin yellow. She grinned at me with rotten teeth. Next to her was Jeanne, who stared at me in dismay. Her eyes said it all; _you abandoned me, Lynsey! I half-raised you, I fed you, I looked after you! And you never came to see me again! How could you? How could you?_

"It wasn't like that!" I cried, ignoring mother, who was approaching me, her fists clenched. I felt Rose pull me away, but I resisted and dropped to my knees. "I'm sorry, old timer! I'm sorry...I just..."

Rose slapped me hard around the face, and I started, leaping to my feet and clutching my face. "Do ya mind?" I screeched. I looked around, and the two ghosts had vanished.

"Not really," Rose said, "now come on!"

We staggered the final few feet and I crashed against the console, propping myself up against it. Rose bent down to check the Doctor, who lay motionless, his eyes shut tight. "Breathing." She assured me, holding her hand over his mouth.

I nodded. "Get him outta here," I told her, "and yourself. I can do this."

Could I though? Yes. I thought so. I looked at the controls, and although there wasn't a big red "stop" button (typical much?) I thought I understood. Two levers on either side. One said "increase" and the other "reduce." I had to hold onto the reduce power. Dump the energy, cut the power...save the city.

"Get him out." I repeated to Rose. "Find Tirwyl. I can handle this."

"Okay," Rose said, dragging the Doctor by his ankles. "I'm coming back for you."

"Counting on it." I told her, turning away from her and looking down at the controls. I gripped the "reduce" lever and pulled it down, dismayed at how much resistance it offered. I gripped with both hands and held it firm, my headache exploding a hundredfold as I strained my muscles. I heard Rose speak again.

 _No, no, no! My job! My job! My victory! Not your life, girl! I saved Locus Heights! Me! Not you!_

"Just shut up!" I wailed, screwing up my face against the tears. I felt as though I was on a roller coaster, and the safety bar had come off; I was flying through the air, holding on by my fingertips, my brain being eaten from the inside. I saw home; not where I'd grown up, because that had never been home. I saw mine and Steph's flat in Wallbridge, I saw the sofa where I'd slump, exhausted, after work, the television I'd watch until late on nights off. But on the screen, a clown danced and jived on stage, in front of an audience of small boys in brown coats and old hats, and curled up on the sofa like the domestic pet of some unspeakable entity, was the Whispering, the millipede of such astonishing size. Steph walked through the door of her bedroom in her blouse and tights, ready to go to work; the blouse was black, smoking and the tights were torn. Steph was a skeleton.

"Mornin' Lynnie," she said, giving me a wave with a spider like, skeletal hand, which fell apart as she waved it. She collapsed as bones onto the floor, her skull rolling across the room with impossible speed. It landed at the foot of the sofa, and the Whispering devoured it, the _crunching_ sending spasms of nausea through my stomach.

"No!" I screamed, bringing myself back to the here and now. No! I'd loosened my grip on the lever, and the pressure of the ion reactor was building. With renewed strength I yanked it down and held it there, crying desparatley. "No, no, no!"

The scene changed. I was at work, and the Doctor was there at my till, pennies over his eyes. In the queue behind him, my mother and Jeanne.

"Useless girl!" My mother cried, landing a punch on my nose, sending me flying backwards off my old seat behind the till. "Useless, useless, useless!"

I righted myself, only to be floored again, this time by Jeanne. "Eat my eggs, would you egg-girl?" she cried, opening a pack of eggs on the conveyor belt and pelting me with eggs, boiled eggs like the kind she used to give me sometimes. They were piping hot. "Eat my soup, would you soup-girl?" She threw scorching tomato soup over me, and I felt my skin scald beneath the liquid, "leave me to die, friendless, would you, drug girl? I died in that flat, y'know! Here's an _updateth_ , if you will - I be _muggeth_ by _friendeth_ of mother of yourn! He wanted my jewelery, and he pushed me, so he did! Me ol' neck snappeth as me fell! I died alone, and scared, and you never so much as thanked me!"

"No!" I wailed, "no, you can't be dead! Not you! This is an illusion, and I ain't believing nothing! You hear me? I deny this! I deny _all_ of this!"

"Deny him." The Doctor said icily, pointing over my shoulder. The Whispering was charging towards me, scuttling over the tills, it's impossibly long body stretching all the way to the back of the store. It's mouth was wide open, yellow mucus pouring out. Riding on it's back was Nick Turner, my long-dead friend, holding a hand-gun.

And then it was gone, and I was back in the reactor room. I leaned my entire body weight against that lever, for the reactor was now making noises I didn't like...

And _boom_ , I was somewhere else - the promenade. The millipede was charging at me from across the river, over half of it's body in Wallbridge, the back end sitting in Nywell on Crouch.

I was sitting on the bench on which Rose had spoken to me...in the sim...sim-s-s-s-s-s-sim-m-m-m- ** _simulation!_**

The Whispering pounced. But the moment was prepared for. Mother, emerging from behind one of the ice cream kiosks which she never once took me to, threw me a familiar object. It was long, with a blue light at the end; the sonic spear.

I grabbed it in my hands, and twirled it with ninja skills I'd never had. I ripped the blue light off the end; beneath it was a needle-sharp point.

The Whispering opened wide, and I gave it it's dinner - the entire length of the spear, point first, into it's mouth. The creature shrieked agony and recoiled.

"They're coming for you," I told it softly, "and they'll find you, and they'll corner you, and then I'll be the one who finally gets you. And I know that, because I've seen it happen. I've seen it before."

The creature exploded into dust, showering me. Behind me, applause. Rose was there, on the bench. That bench. Of course. She'd never left it.

Then everything went black, and I only heard her; _this is all wrong! I never betrayed the Doctor! I'd have died before I'd betrayed him! Let us go! This has gone on long enough, and I'm tired, and your magnificent. This was meant to make you better, but the Tardis has made a mockery of us! She's laughing at us! She's playing, and we're the toys, and I've had enough!_

And I was back in the reactor room. I couldn't go on; I had no strength left.

"Give it up." A voice said. I wheeled around; the millipede was there.

No! How? This wasn't the hallucination! This was _real_!

But then Rose appeared, and slammed the spear into his mouth, just as I had done. Struggling against it, she turned to face me.

"Come on then, new girl!" She screamed, fighting off the massive creature, "do the job for me! End this!"

I turned away and, with a final effort, managed to yank the lever down hard.

The reactor went quiet, and just like that, the headache went away.

And I knew. I stood there, stock still, tears rolling down my cheeks. I felt like laughing - almost.

I turned around. Rose wasn't there, and nor was the Whispering. Of course not - the Whispering was headed to Earth. And Rose was downstairs.

Except she wasn't. She never had been.

I stumbled away from the silent reactor and it's controls, and as I did so, I heard the Doctor speaking to me from far away. His voice was soft, loving even.

 _Thank you for my life,_ the voice told me.

I shut my eyes against the tears and made for the door, on legs that refused to stop shaking.

 _Thank you for Rose's life,_ it continued.

I watched as my hand reached weakly for the handle of the reactor room door. I tried to pull it open, but I hadn't the strength.

 _Lynsey - the times we would have had_

The door finally flew open, and I fell from the room. Rather than hitting the floor, I was caught in a pair of large, armour clad arms. I looked up and saw Tirwyl's face glowing down at me, grinning broadly, his eyes watering.

 _the times we would have had, darling_

Behind us, the Doctor lay on the floor. His eyes were shut, but his chest was rising and falling. Tirwyl lowered me down next to him, and sat on his other side. "He'll be just fine." He promised me.

I nodded, too choked to reply. I reached out and stroked the Doctor gently on the cheek. I bent down and kissed his forehead gently. "Thanks." I told him.

 _oh, the times we could have had_

It was the Doctor's voice, but he wasn't speaking. Tirwyl reached over the sleeping Doctor and grabbed my shoulder. "You saved us," he told me, crying himself, "you saved Locus Heights!"

"Did I?" I said faintly, tears rolling down my cheeks.

"How can we ever repay you?" Tirwyl blubbed. "I don't even know who you are! You never said."

 _the times we would have had_

I laughed miserably and looked up at Tirwyl. "What's your name?" He asked me.

 _the times we didn't have._

And I, looking him squarely in the face, opened my mouth and replied, "Rose Tyler."

* * *

 ** _The Doctor's Diary, Entry 1969 Part 2_**

* * *

 _So...stopped a whopping great ion reactor melting down, saved a city, all the usual day-to-day tasks. Well, I can't be taking all the credit actually - I dumped a shed load of the ion power, but it half-killed me. I slept six hours and woke up feeling like I'd regenerated (bloody terrible, in other words)._

 _But my pal actually shut down the reactor. It was she, not I, who saved the city, she not I who actually shut it down. She suffered terribly in there, but she carried right on and did what needed to be done. If Tirwyl hadn't risked his life by going in and pulling her out afterwards, she might even have died._

 _That's how amazing a girl she is. Oh, she earned my trust a long time ago. My respect, however? If she hadn't earned that before, she's certainly earned it now. She's here to stay so long as she wants. She's proved herself to be the best of the best, and it's my sincere pleasure to have her. I'll even start using her name in here now - Rose. Rosie T. Rosie-Wosey T T. Let's stick with Rose. There! So now whenever I get the itch to read over old adventures in a thousand years or so, I'll remember the name._

 _Still, all is not won. Locus Heights is safe. It'll rebuild. But the frozen sea will have to wait. For now, friends and allies, we must to Earth. I've got a fix - little town in Kent, name of Wallbridge. It's there. In some big old supermarket, no less._

 _So let's go shopping. Sounds like fun. Doubt it will be._

* * *

 **END OF CHAPTER**

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Thank you for reading!

If anyone's confused, then re-read the Doctor's Diary segments - but not starting from chapter one. Start from his earliest entry, found in chapter six. :)

Anyone's free to PM me if they're still unsure, but hopefully it does make sense when you re-read those parts.

Thanks again! Hope you've all enjoyed it.


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